On the Sacred Disease 51
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This disease which is called sacred arises from the same causes as the others, from
the things that come and go away and from cold and sun and winds that change
and never rest. These things are divine, so that one ought not to separate this
disease and regard it as being more divine than the others; it is rather that all are
divine and all are human, and each of them has a nature and a power of its own,
and none is hopeless or impossible to deal with.
The first interpretation is mainly based upon the remark ‘these things are
divine’ ($ ’ , 18. 2 ); ‘these things’ is taken as a reference to
the ‘causes’ (
) mentioned in the previous sentence, ‘the things
that come and go away, etc.’ (*
!) "
!) .). The
author derives the divinity of the disease from the divinity of its causes,
the climatic factors whose influence has been discussed in 10. 2 ff. (cold and
heat; 6. 378 ff. L.) and chapter 13 (winds), and hinted at in 8. 1 ( 6. 374 L.),
8. 7 ( 6. 376 L.), 9. 4 ( 6. 378 L.) and 11. 1 ( 6. 380 – 2 L.). And since these factors
are – as the author claims – the causes ofalldiseases, all diseases are equally
divine, so that none of them should be distinguished from the others as
being more divine.
At the same time all diseases areanthr ̄opina, ‘human’. It is not stated
explicitly in either of these passages in what sense they are human,^17 but it
has been suggested that diseases are caused (or at least determined in their
development) by human factors as well.^18 These factors are not mentioned
here, probably for the very reason that they do not constitute the divine
character of the disease, which is the important issue here, and, perhaps,
because the importance of these factors varies from one disease to another,
which explains why they cannot be included in ‘the same causes’ (*
(* )). For these reasons, for instance, the brain ( 9
) is not mentioned in chapter 18 , although the writer had stated ear-
lier ( 3. 1 ) that it is the brain which is causally responsible (A
) for this
disease (and for all important diseases), a claim which he has substan-
tiated at length in the preceding chapters 14 – 17 (on this, as on possi-
ble differences of meaning between!
andA
, see pp. 59 – 60
(^17) This may be due to the polemical context: some diseases are called divine by the opponents, while
others are therefore regarded as human. But in the author’s view all diseases are both divine and
human: the explanandum is not that all diseases are human, but in what sense all diseases are divine
as well.
(^18) Norenberg ( ̈ 1968 ) 714 ; Nestle ( 1938 ) 3 – 4.