HIST 449 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Alternative Medicine, Smog, Phlegm
9 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
HIST 449- Jan 25/18
How Hippocrates thinks about Disease Continued
Epidemic means a collective problem. Seen as a sort of collective punishment
Hippocratic author in Nature of Man coins the term epidemic; avoids the word
pestilence or plague so to separate him from authors past
Part 1: The Impact of Air in Disease and Health
Text: Breaths
• Close in style to The Art
• Some of it goes against the Nature of Man
• Opening talks of the sorrow of the doctor
• Doctors needs a moral high ground in this time, the doctor has a bad
reputation for profiting through suffering
• Debate on the doctors morality
• Opposites are cured through opposites- allopathy statement
Primacy of Air
• Is everywhere- breath on the inside of the body, wind on the outside of the
body
• Dynamic and powerful
• Fire and water
• Air is the vehicle of the earth- unclear about what he means by this
• Air drives the seasons and the heavenly bodies
• Air is necessary for humans
• 2 kinds of fevers- epidemic and sporadic, both are caused by airs, pollution in
the air targets humans and animals, bad air is species dependent, different
airs affect different species
• Miasmasin (pollution) is a religious stain, similar vibe to Hesoid and Homer
(idea of smog enveloping everyone)
• Example with Oedipus, he committed 2 sins that brought down pollution on
Thebes
Winds
• Shivering is chills from wind
• Sweat = wind striking at the pores
• Headache= veins in the head being airy
Part 2: Is the Sacred Disease actually divine?
Epilepsy
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Hippocratic author in nature of man coins the term epidemic; avoids the word pestilence or plague so to separate him from authors past. Part 1: the impact of air in disease and health. Winds: shivering is chills from wind, sweat = wind striking at the pores, headache= veins in the head being airy. Text: the sacred disease: essay/speech, probably delivered as a defense, strictly about epilepsy, attacking the name (cid:494)sacred disease(cid:495, says that it is just like any other disease, blames self serving healers such as magicians and purifiers, calls them. It simply has a peculiar character quacks and phonies. This makes the disease not divine, if human could potentially control it: also, the gods are holy and why would a holy being defile a person, hippocrates as champion of the gods. Part 3: intro to hippocratic therapeutics, dietetics and bloodletting and the like.
