Dreams, Healing, and Medicine in Greece: From Antiquity to the Present

356 Pages·2013·2.02 MB·English

by  Steven M. Oberhelman

Dreams, Healing, and Medicine
in Greece
From Antiquity to the Present
Edited by
Steven M. Oberhelman
Dreams, Healing, anD meDicine in greece
This page has been left blank intentionally
Dreams, Healing, and medicine
in greece
From antiquity to the Present
Edited by
steven m. OberHelman
Texas A&M University, USA
© steven m. Oberhelman 2013
all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
steven m. Oberhelman has asserted his right under the copyright, Designs and Patents act,
1988, to be identified as the editor of this work.
Published by
ashgate Publishing limited ashgate Publishing company
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Union road suite 3-1
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Dreams, healing, and medicine in greece : from antiquity to
the present.
1. Dreams – Therapeutic use – greece – History.
2. medicine, magic, mystic, and spagiric –greece –
History. 3. Dreams – religious aspects – christianity.
4. medicine, greek and roman.
i. Oberhelman, steven m.
615.8'52'09495-dc23
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dreams, healing, and medicine in greece : from antiquity to the present / edited by
steven m. Oberhelman.
pages cm
includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-1-4094-2423-9 (hardcover) – isbn 978-1-4094-2424-6 (ebook)
1. medicine, ancient. 2. medicine – greece. 3. medical innovations – History.
i. Oberhelman, steven m., editor of compilation.
r135.D74 2013
610.938–dc23
2012034182
isbn 9781409424239 (hbk)
isbn 9781409424246 (ebk –PDF)
isbn 9781409474395 (ebk –ePUb)
V
Printed and bound in great britain
by mPg PrintgrOUP
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Notes on Contributors ix
Acknowledgements xiii
1 Introduction: Medical Pluralism, Healing, and Dreams in
Greek Culture 1
Steven M. Oberhelman
Part One: antIquIty
2 The Value of Dream Diagnosis in the Medical Praxis of the
Hippocratics and Galen 33
Maithe A.A. Hulskamp
3 Dream Healing in asclepieia in the Mediterranean 69
Louise Cilliers and François Pieter Retief
4 Writing the Medical Dream in the Hippocratic Corpus and
at epidaurus 93
Lee T. Pearcy
5 Dream Hermeneutics in aelius aristides’ Hieroi Logoi 109
Janet Downie
6 Illness and Its Metaphors in artemidorus’ Oneirocritica: a
negative List 129
Christine Walde
Part tWO: ByzantIuM
7 Who Is behind Incubation Stories? The Hagiographers of
Byzantine Dream-Healing Miracles 161
Ildikó Csepregi
vi Dreams, Healing, and Medicine in Greece
8 Healing Dreams in early Byzantine Miracle Collections 189
Stavroula Constantinou
9 Hospital Dreams in Byzantium 199
Timothy S. Miller
10 The Stuff of Dreams: Substances and Dreams in Greek and
Latin Literature 217
Jovan Bilbija
11 Magic, Infidelity, and Secret annotations in a Cypriot Manuscript
of the early Fourteenth Century (Wellcome MSL 14) 251
Barbara Zipser
Part tHree: tHe POSt-ByzantIne PerIOD tO tHe
Current Day
12 Dreams, Dreambooks, and Post-Byzantine Practical Healing
Manuals (Iatrosophia) 269
Steven M. Oberhelman
13 Fields in Dreams: anxiety, experience, and the Limits of Social
Constructionism in Modern Greek Dream narratives 295
Charles Stewart
14 Dream Healing for a new age 317
Jill Dubisch
Index 333
List of Illustrations
Figures
1.1 Venn Diagram of Kleinman’s Medical Pluralism 2
1.2 Venn Diagram of Gentilcore’s Medical Pluralism 6
3.1 Sleeping Chamber for Incubation at Epidaurus. Photograph by
S.M. Oberhelman 71
3.2 Votive Thanksofferings of Healed Body Parts at the Asclepieion
at Corinth. Photograph courtesy of www.HolyLandPhotos.org 73
3.3 Coffered Ceiling of Tholos Building at Epidaurus. Photograph
courtesy of www.HolyLandPhotos.org 85
11.1 Wellcome Library, MSL 14, p. 275: The second folio of the
fragment. The page is partly torn and glued together with paper
strips. It contains instructions on pulse diagnosis and a magical
scholion written on the lower margins by a later hand. 253
11.2 Wellcome Library, MSL 14, p. 283: The main text discusses a
type of fish. On the lower margins, a borderline magical text was
written in invisible ink. The photograph is digitally enhanced. To
the naked eye, only a few characters are visible. The general area
of the scholion has a somewhat darker appearance. 254
11.3 Wellcome Library, MSL 14, p. 290: Instructions on how to make
an amulet to induce childbirth. A later hand corrected the Psalm
quotation in blue ink and added one more word. 259
11.4 Wellcome Library, MSL 14, p. 279: Main text on phlebotomy
and three lines of annotations in invisible ink. The photograph is
digitally enhanced. 263
Tables
2.1 Resemblance of Imagery in Diseases, Internal Affections,
and Regimen 44
6.1 Artemidorus’ Typology of Dreams and Interpretative Grids 134
6.2 Diseases and Bodily Discomforts Mentioned in the Oneirocritica 142
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Notes on Contributors
Jovan Bilbija is a former Ph.D. student in the Department of Greek Language
and Literature at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. His main research interests
include divination in the ancient Mediterranean world and oneirology in
Graeco-Roman antiquity. In April 2012, he defended his dissertation entitled
“The Dream in Antiquity: Aspects and Analyses.”
Louise Cilliers was for many years Head of the Department of Latin and then
of the Department of Classical Languages at the University of the Free State
in Bloemfontein, South Africa, and is at present an honorary research fellow
of that university. She regularly reads papers at international conferences
and was for many years the editor of the national journal Acta Classica. Her
main research interest is the texts of the fourth- and fifth-century AD North
African medical writers, on which she has published various articles, as well as a
critical edition with translation and commentary of Vindicainus’ Gynaecia. At
present she is working on a critical edition of another North African medical
physician, Theodorus Priscianus, and has recently contributed lemmas to
various international encyclopedias. A second research project is that on ancient
medicine with a colleague, François Retief, which has to date produced some
70 articles in accredited and international journals, and for which they were
awarded the Stals Prize for Interdisciplinary Teamwork by the South African
Academy of Arts and Science.
Stavroula Constantinou is Assistant Professor of Byzantine Literature at the
Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, University of Cyprus.
Her research interests include literary theory and Byzantine literature, especially
hagiography and fictional narrative. She has published a book on female holiness
and the body (Female Corporeal Performances: Reading the Body in Byzantine
Passions and Lives of Holy Women [Uppsala, 2005]), and a number of articles
on genre, performance, gender, ritual, punishment, and friendship in Byzantine
literature. She is currently working on a monograph on the genre of miracle
collection and is co-editing a volume on court ceremonies and rituals of power
in the medieval Mediterranean.