Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

66 Hippocratic Corpus and Diocles of Carystusalready hinted at in 1.41 and 1.43; apparently the magicians practised theirpurifications outside the official holy places. The use of the word ‘sprinkle’(), which means ritual cleansing with water, 50 is opposedto the ‘impious’ use of blood in the purificatory rituals of the magicians(1.40); 51 and the obscure clause ‘not as polluting ourselves thereby, but inorder to be cleansed from an earlier pollution we might have contracted’( ) probably contains a reactionagainst the strange idea held by the magicians that the use of water mayentail pollution, which underlies their prohibition of the taking of baths(1.12, 6.354 L.). 52Thus interpreted, this sentence shows that the writer believes in the realityof divine purification. Does this mean that he believes, after all, inthe divine healing of diseases as taking place in temple medicine? Onecannot be sure here, for the divine purification is explicitly defined by theauthor as applying to moral trangressions ( ), indeed tothe greatest of these. This restriction is significant in that it may indicatethat in the author’s opinion an appeal to divine cleansing is only (or primarily)appropriate in cases of moral transgressions. I would suggest, as ahypothesis, that the author of On the Sacred Disease here aims at markingoff the vague boundaries between medicine and religion: in his opinion it50 See Parker (1983) 19; Ginouvès (1962) 299–310.51 On the use of blood in cathartic ritual, and on the criticism it generally provoked, see Parker(1983) 371–3 and Temkin (1971), 12–13; cf. Theophrastus, On Piety, frs. 13–14 Pötscher (= fr. 584aFortenbaugh, Sharples and Sollenberger). The emphasis in 1.40 is on ., but perhaps alsoon .52 I am by no means sure that this is a correct interpretation of this difficult sentence (which isomitted, from onwards by MS , which is perhaps, as Jones suggests, due to haplographyof but which may also indicate that the text is not completely reliable). At any rate, thephrase obviously expresses a reaction against the admittedly strange idea thatthe sprinkling of water entails pollution (on the prohibition to take baths see Ginouvès (1962) 395n. 8; Lanata (1967) 51f.; Parker (1983) 215; Moulinier (1952) 136; Ducatillon (1977) 169). However, asGinouvès points out, there is a difference between a and a . Perhaps it ispreferable, as H. S. Versnel has suggested to me, to interpret the sentence as an extreme statementof the author’s belief (expressed in 1.44–5) that a god does not pollute a man but rather purifieshim from a pollution: ‘while crossing the border between the sacred and the profane we sprinkleourselves; this is, as I have said just now, not symbolic of a pollution which comes from the sacred[which is obvious to everyone, because:] it is a purification performed by God of the defilementthat originates from something else [i.e. the secular]’. There is still another possible interpretationwhich might be considered, which makes the sentence apply to the practice of temple medicine:‘while entering the temple [for the healing of a disease], we sprinkle ourselves, not as if we werepolluted [by the disease, i.e. as if the disease were a pollution – quod non: cf.1.40] but in order tocleanse ourselves from an earlier pollution we may have contracted’. This would suit the author’saim of distinguishing between moral transgressions (which are, in his opinion, forms of pollution,) and physical diseases (which are not) and would make sense of the words in 1.44. However, on this interpretation is difficult, and it would presumably require aperfect participle () instead of the present .