ion of the Asclepions, medical and
priestly pursuits had, before the time of Hippocrates, become combined;
and, consequently, although rational means were to a certain extent
applied to the cure of diseases, the more common practice was to resort
chiefly to superstitious modes of working upon the imagination. It is
not surprising, therefore, to find that every sickness, especially
epidemics and plagues, were attributed to the anger of some offended
god, and that penance and supplications often took the place of personal
and domestic cleanliness, fresh air, and light.

It was Hippocrates who emancipated medicine from the thraldom of
superstition, and in this way wrested the practice of his art from the
monopoly of the priests. In his treatise on "The Sacred Disease"
(possibly epilepsy), he discusses the controverted question whether or
not this disease was an infliction from the gods; and he decidedly
maintains that there is no such a thing as a sacred disease, for all
diseases arise from natural causes, and no one can be ascribed to the
gods more than another. He points out that it is simply because this
disease is unlike other diseases that men have come to regard its cause
as divine, and yet it is not really more wonderful than the paroxysms
of fevers and many other diseases not thought sacred. He exposes the
cunning of the impostors who pretend to cure men by purifications and
spells; "who give themselves out as being excessively religious, and as
knowing more than other people;" and he argues that "whoever is able, by
purifications and conjurings, to drive away such an affection, will be
able, by other practices, to excite it, and, according to this view, its
divine nature is entirely done away with." "Neither, truly," he
continues, "do I count it a worthy opinion to hold that the body of a
man is polluted by the divinity, the most impure by the most holy; for,
were it defiled, or did it suffer from any other thing, it would be like
to be purified and sanctified rather than polluted by the divinity." As
an additional argument against the cause being divine, he adduces the
fact that this disease is hereditary, like other diseases, and that it
attacks persons of a peculiar temperament, namely, the phlegmatic, but
not the bilious; and "yet if it were really more divine than the
others," he justly adds, "it ought to befall all alike."

Again, speaking of a disease common among the Scythians, Hippocrates
remarks that th