Diseases attributed to gods (1)

Text
The writer of the Greek medical treatise argues against his colleagues who associate diseases with particular gods, as was also the case in the Akkadian medical texts.

Hippocratic Corpus, On the Sacred Disease 4:
But perhaps what they profess is not true, the fact being that men, in need of a livelihood, contrive and devise many fictions of all sorts, about this disease among other things, putting the blame, for each form of the affection, upon a particular god. If the patient imitate a goat, if he roar, or suffer convulsions in the right side, they say that the Mother of the Gods is to blame. If he utter a piercing and loud cry they liken him to a horse and blame Poseidon. Should he pass some excrement, as often happens under the stress of the disease, the surname Enodia is applied. If it be more frequent and thinner, like that of birds, it is Apollo Nomius. If he foam at the mouth and kick, Ares has the blame. When at night occur fears and terrors, delirium, jumpings from the bed and rushings out of doors, they say that Hekate is attacking or that heroes (= ghosts) are assaulting.

Source (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Hippocratic Corpus, On the Sacred Disease 4

Bibliography

Amar Annus

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