Hippokratic Corpus, On the Sacred Disease (430 – 400 BCE)
On the Sacred Disease attacks magicians and priests as impious charlatans for blaming the
illness on the gods and prescribing ritual cures. The illness, it maintains, is no more sacred
than others, since all are divine – yet subject to human expertise. The illness develops in utero
from an excess of phlegm; phlegmatics are particularly susceptible. Symptoms include
convulsions, nightmares, hallucinations, hunchback and, apparently, the epileptic “aura.”
The illness might disappear in childhood or become chronic; victims may be “distorted” or
have no obvious vestiges. Scholars have equated the illness with epilepsy, though stroke,
schizophrenia, and tuberculosis may also be indicated. “Sacred disease” is a topic of A,
W, P; On Breaths; and Diseases of Young Girls.
The author also argues for and against the views of philosophers and doctors. Bile cannot
cause the illness (contra Airs, Waters, Places); constitution is familial (contra Airs, Waters, Places
which posits that winds and environmental factors determine regional constitutions).
Reproduction occurs by pangenesis, and unhealthy seed can be inherited. The importance
of air to cognition may show D A’s influence. The author may be
following A (and anticipating P and D) in considering the brain
the locus of intelligence, emotion, and perception, and not the diaphragm (H, etc.) or
the heart (A, etc.). On the Sacred Disease shares enough with Airs, Waters, Places
that many assert single authorship; there is no consensus on relative dating. There are also
significant differences between the texts (as above).
B knew the treatise; E deems it a genuine work of H.
The pseudo-Hippokratic Letter 19 on madness incorporates a section. G glossed some
words and considered its author “noteworthy,” though inferior to Hippokrate ̄s, and wrote no
commentary. Others providing testimonia assume Hippokratic authorship: H
(P.), S in C A, and Theodo ̄re ̄tos (the 5th c. bishop of Cyprus).
On the Sacred Disease did not greatly influence the etiology or treatment of the sacred
disease. Plato and Gale ̄n attributed the illness to black bile. D, P, Aristo-
tle, T, and S variously recommend for it such typical substances of
the materia magica as genitals, blood, and excrement; Gale ̄n advocates concocting pulverized
human bone and wearing an amulet. Caelius Aurelianus reports that some doctors thought
magicians’ aid helpful in treatment.
Littré v. 6; J. Jouanna, Hippocrate v. 2.3: La Maladie Sacrée (CUF 2003).
Julie Laskaris
Hippokratic Corpus, Sevens (440? – 50 BCE)
First known in a Latin translation, then in a fragmentary Greek version (the complete text
survives in Arabic), it treats cosmology and pathology by applying the pattern of the num-
ber seven (hebdomadic principle). The kosmos divides into seven parts as do all of the
things in it; the outermost part is Olympos, then the stars, Sun and Moon, the sublunary
region, with air and waters over the Earth, then at the seventh place the Earth itself. The
Earth and the outer region are stationary, but the other five parts revolve eternally around
the Earth, moved by themselves and the immortal gods. There are seven stars, and seven
seasons, seven winds, seven “seasons” or “ages” in the human life; the seven parts of the
world are associated with the seven parts of the body and each part can itself be divided
into seven; the soul is also a mixture of seven substances, the Earth’s surface divides into
HIPPOKRATIC CORPUS, ON THE SACRED DISEASE