Sacred Disease - epilepsy

The Holy Illness and Epilepsy

The Holy Illness is an epilepsy-related treatise. According to the author, he does not consider that the disease is more divine or sacred than any other disease. He claims that individuals who believe it is a heavenly visitation are simply human and have no knowledge of the condition. According to the author, the author’s theory of divine origin, which attempts to explain epilepsy, is undermined by how easily the ailment can be healed. The practitioners argue that only ritual purification and incantation can cure epilepsy. The fact that the disease is difficult to grasp, on the other hand, supports the divine genesis idea. The author of the treatise believes that the disease is just a disease like any other with the same nature and cause. He believes it can be cured like any other disease unless “it has not become inveterate and too powerful for the drugs which are given” (Adams, 5). Since the malady is similar to other diseases, then it is neither unintelligible nor unsusceptible to treatment. The author explains that there is a way a person who has epilepsy can prevent the disease from being worse which is applying the remedies most hostile to the disease and to those things that it is not accustomed to. Therefore, there is a way we can cure the disease: attacking it with a hostile substance. Providing cold and heat to the human body at the right time with the aid of regimen dryness and moisture is a remedy that could cure the malady.

Response to Question 2

The treatise has accomplished something worthwhile in helping us understand epilepsy along rational principles. The author is convincing when he explains that gods do not destroy but rather they heal and they cannot be blamed for the disease. He says “.... claims and trickery, these practitioners pretend a deeper knowledge than is given to others; with their prescriptions of ’sanctifications’ and ’purifications,’ their patter about divine visitation and possession by devils, they seek to deceive” (Adams, 3). Besides, by explaining that epilepsy has to do with a defect in the human brain, the author manages to expose the impious fraud of the professors who claim epilepsy is associated with divine visitation. The interventions given by the practitioners who regard the malady as sacred such as abstaining from particular diets suggest that the cause of the disease is on that particular diet and not the gods. Finally, the author’s analogy of the change of winds and the attacks on an epileptic person clearly illustrates why epilepsy should be understood along rational principles.

Response to Question 3

The author of the treatise would agree with my judgment of the value of understanding the disease in the ways he insists that we should be in the absence of an effective treatment because of two reasons. Firstly, I agree with the author that the disease is no sacred than any other disease and can be cured unless the disease is so chronic and powerful than the medication or therapies provided. Therefore, if there is no effective treatment for the disease, it does not mean that the illness has some sought of divine origin or is caused by the gods. Secondly, the author says that “Each has its own nature and character and there is nothing in any disease which is unintelligible or which is insusceptible to treatment” (Adams, 21). Therefore, if epilepsy was what the practitioners who pretend to know everything about the disease as it is, then it could not be categorized as a malady.

Works Cited

Adams, Francis. On the Sacred Disease. Adelaide: The University of Adelaide Library, 2007. Internet resource.