Greek Medicine 101 



She thought that, as the god was not present, but was away in 

 Epidaurus, his sons cut off her head, but were unable to put it 

 back again. Then they sent a messenger to Asklepius asking 

 him to come to Troizen. Meanwhile day came, and the priest 

 actually saw her head cut off from the body. The next night 

 Aristagora had a dream. She thought the god came from 

 Epidaurus and fastened her head on to her neck. Then he cut 

 open her belly, and stitched it up again. So she was cured.' 



4 A man had an abdominal abscess. He saw a vision, and 

 thought that the god ordered the slaves who accompanied him 

 to lift him up and hold him, so that his abdomen could be cut 

 open. The man tried to get away, but his slaves caught him and 

 bound him. So Asclepius cut him open, rid him of the abscess, 

 and then stitched him up again, releasing him from his bonds. 

 Straightway he departed cured, and the floor of the Abaton 

 was covered with blood.' J 



In the records of almost all temple cures, a great number of 

 which have survived in a wide varietv of documents, an essential 



4 



element is the process of eyKoijur/fl-iy, incubation or temple sleep, 

 usually in a special sleeping-place or Abaton. The process has 

 a close parallel in certain modern Greek churches and in places 

 of worship much further West ; there are even traces of it in 

 these islands, and it is more than probable that the Christian 

 practice is descended by direct continuity from the pagan. 2 The 

 whole character of the temple treatment was and is of a kind 

 to suggest to the patient that he should dream of the god, an 

 event which therefore usually takes place. Such treatment by 

 suggestion is applicable only to certain classes of disease and is 

 always liable to fall into the hands of fanatics and impostors. 



The Epidaurian inscriptions are given by M. Fraenkel in the Corpus 

 Inscriptionum Graecarum iy, 951-6, and are discussed by Mary Hamilton 

 (Mrs. Guy Dickins), Incubation, St. Andrews, 1906, from whose translation 

 I have quoted. Further inscriptions are given by Cavvadias in the Archaio- 

 logike Ephemeris, 1918, p. 155 (issued 1921). 



2 We are almost told as much in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodem-ns, I, 

 a work probably composed about the end of the fourth century. 



