The Asclepion
Prof. Nancy Demand, Indiana University
- Bloomington
Illness of Maiden*
"The beginning of medicine in my opinion is the constitution
of the ever-existing. For it is not possible to know the
nature of diseases, which indeed it is [the aim] of the art to
discover, if you do not know the beginning in the undivided,
from which it is divided out.
First about the so-called sacred disease,
and about those who are stricken, and about terrors, all that
men fear exceedingly so as to be out of their minds and to seem
to have seen certain daimons hostile to them, either in the night
or in the day or at both times. For from such a vision many
already are strangled, more women than men; for the female nature
is more fainthearted and lesser. But maidens, for whom it is
the time of marriage, remaining unmarried, suffer this more at
the time of the going down of the menses. Earlier they do
not suffer these distresses, for it is later that the blood is
collected in the womb so as to flow away. Whenever then
the mouth of the exit is not opened for it, and more blood flows
in because of nourishment and the growth of the body, at this
time the blood, not having an outlet, bursts forth by reason
of its magnitude into the kardia (heart) and phrenes
(diaphragm). Whenever these are filled, the kardia
becomes sluggish; then from sluggishness comes torpor; then
from torpor, madness. It is just as when someone sits for
a long time, the blood from the hips and thighs, pressed out
to the lower legs and feet, causes torpor, and from the torpor
the feet become powerless for walking until the blood runs back
to its own place; and it runs back quickest whenever, standing
in cold water, you moisten the part up to the ankles. This
torpor is not serious, for the blood quickly runs back on account
of the straightness of the veins, and the part of the body is
not critical. But from the kardia and the phrenes it
runs back slowly, for the veins are at an angle, and the part
is critical and disposed for derangement and mania. And
whenever these parts are filled, shivering with fever starts
up quickly; they call these fevers wandering. But when these
things are thus, she is driven mad by the violent inflammation,
and she is made murderous by the putrefaction, and she is fearful
and anxious by reason of the gloom, and strangulations result
from the pressure around the kardia, and the spirit, distraught
and anguished by reason of the badness of the blood, is drawn
towards evil. And another thing, she addresses by name fearful
things, and they order her to jump about and to fall down into
wells and to be strangled, as if it were better and had every
sort of advantage. And whenever they are without visions,
there is a kind of pleasure that makes her desire death as if
it were some sort of good. But when the woman returns
to reason, women dedicate both many other things and the most
expensive feminine clothing to Artemis, being utterly deceived,
the soothsayers ordering it. Her deliverance [is] whenever
nothing hinders the outflow of blood. But I myself bid maidens,
whenever they suffer such things, to cohabit with men as quickly
as possible, for if they conceive they become healthy. But
if not, either immediately in the prime of youth, or a little
later, she will be seized [by this illness], if not by some other
illness. And of married women, those who are sterile suffer
this more often."
*Text: 8.466-70 Littre; translation
adapted from N. Demand, Birth, Death and Motherhood, Johns
Hopkins, 1994 (retaining the confusion between singular and plural
found in the Greek text).
