Aretaeus's "Stomachic" Patients: Comic Features in a Medical Discussion?

Abstract

Abstract:Food, eating, and the human drives and functions related to them are stock features of ancient comedy and comic discourse in general. Food and drink intake are also key areas of observation and therapy in ancient medicine; they lie at the center of the "regimen" which is so important in medical thought from the Hippocratics onwards. In this paper, I briefly contextualize the discussions about food in ancient medicine up to the beginning of our era, and then concentrate on a unique document, the discussion of the disease stomachikon by Aretaeus. This text contains many elements of parody, and even grotesque characterization, which are nowhere to be found in earlier sources. I present in detail these features of the text and their comic effects, and explore the questions of why such parodic elements are absent from classical medicine. I propose that Aretaeus's unusually comic take on the disease sheds light on some crucial developments in medicine as a professional activity and as a technical literary genre during the first and second centuries C.E.