Περὶ ἱερῆς νούσου

aka De morbo sacro

The Sacred Disease

Author

Hippocrates

Language

Ionic Greek

Year

c. 400 BCE

Genre

Nonfiction / Essays / Treatise

ancient worldgraeco-roman

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📷2 photos

On the Sacred Disease is a work of the Hippocratic Corpus, written about 400 B.C. Its authorship cannot be confirmed, so is regarded as dubious. The treatise is thought to contain one of the first recorded observations of epilepsy in humans. The author explains these phenomena by the flux of the phlegm flowing from the brain into the veins rather than assigning them a divine origin. This turn from a supernatural to a naturalistic explanation is considered a major breakthrough in the history of medicine.