Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

On the Sacred Disease 63contrarily to their own principles: they pretend to be pious men and to relyon the gods for help, but in fact they make the impious claim to performactions which a pious man believes to be reserved to the gods alone. Yet theauthor himself appears to have an explicit opinion on what is pious andwhat is not (or what a truly pious man should and should not do).This becomes clearer in the second accusation of asebeia in 1.39ff.(6.362 L.). The impiety of his opponents, he points out, consists in theirpractising purificatory rites and incantations, and in their cleansing thediseased by means of blood as if they had a ‘pollution’ (miasma) orwerepossessed by a demon, or bewitched by other people. However, the writerproceeds (1.41, 6.362 L.), they should act in the opposite way: they shouldsacrifice and pray and, having brought the diseased into the temple, makesupplications to the gods. Yet instead of this they practise purifications andconceal the polluted material lest anyone would get into contact with it.However, the author claims again (1.43, 6.362–4 L.), they should bring thematerial into the temple and hand it over to the god, if this god were thecause of it.The remarks in sections 1.41 and 1.43 again show that the author hasdefinite opinions on the pious course of action when dealing with a diseasewhich is believed to be of divine origin and for which an appeal ismade to divine healing. The contrast between sections 1.39–40 and 1.41 isclearly what we would call the contrast between magic and religion: in thefirst case man himself performs the purification by making the gods obeyhis incantations (epaōidai); in the latter case man approaches the gods inthe temple and prays for help, but it is the god who performs the purification(cf. 1.44–5). 43 It has been suggested by Lanata that these preceptsconcerning piety (eusebeia) are characteristic of the holy prescriptions oftemple medicine. 44 This is not inconceivable, since it is confirmed by ourknowledge of the holy laws of Asclepieia 45 – although the precepts are sogeneral that they can hardly be regarded as exclusively characteristic oftemple medicine. Now, this is not to suggest that the author of On theSacred Disease, who has always been hailed as one of the first championsof an emancipated science of medicine, actually was a physician servingin the cult of Asclepius 46 – even though the borderlines between secular43 See Nestle (1938) 2; Edelstein (1967a) 223, 237.44 Lanata (1967) 38 n. 86. Cf. Ducatillon (1977) 164 n. 3.45 On the ritual of temple medicine see Edelstein and Edelstein (1945) vol. ii, 148–9; Parker (1983) 213n. 31; Ginouvès (1962) 349–57; Krug(1985) 128–34.46 Contra Herzog (1931) 149–51, who ignores the hypothetical wording of the sentence and whoseinterpretation of the author’s concept of the divinity of the disease is completely mistaken (cf. thecriticism of Lloyd (1975c) 13 n. 19).