Students of ancient Greek medicine have been faced with an inescapable contradiction. While Hippocratic medical theory and practice were firmly established on a rational basis, a pronounced irrational element harmoniously coexisted and continued to gather strength alongside rational medicine. How such opposites could actually fuel the growth of each other is one of the main threads running through this volume. O. explains that the concept for this collection was born during a visit to Greece to attend a conference on dreams in the Byzantine world, which was expanded to include dreams in medicine from ancient to modern Greece. The inclusive nature of this volume is one of its major strengths, as the reader can trace an unbroken chain in folk medicine around the Greek world, as well as the continuity from the Hippocratic physician to the πρακτικός of twentieth-century Greece (the physician trained through an apprenticeship and not through a University degree programme). O. provides an excellent introduction to the collection with a discussion of the relationship between professional medicine, folk treatments and the religious sphere. He convincingly rejects the model of Arthur Kleinman over coexisting healing systems (popular, professional and folk sectors), in favour of the model of David Gentilcore (medical, popular and ecclesiastical sectors), arguing that it fits much better the Greek reality. The article contains a good review of the existing literature and an enticing introduction to the subject.
The article of M. Hulskamp on healing dreams in the Hippocratics and Galen opens the section on antiquity. Hulskamp provides an informative account of dreams as a diagnostic tool and as the medium through which the soul is communicating with the body, when its link with the outside world is severed during sleep. She concludes that although the value of dreams as diagnostic tools was recognised by the Hippocratics and Galen, their actual usage is rather limited. In the next article L. Cilliers and F.P. Retief firmly answer ‘no’ to the core question whether the physician saw himself in competition with the cult of Asclepius, while they offer a wonderfully lucid and comprehensive account of healing in the Asclepeia, and conclude that sometimes miraculous recovery against the expectations of experienced physicians might happen then as it happens in our times. On a more rational tone, they offer a series of realistic possibilities accounting for patient recovery in the temples of Asclepius. This article could serve well the needs of an undergraduate course on the cult of Asclepius on account of the clarity and comprehensive presentation of the material. L.T. Pearcy offers an insightful discussion about interpretative paradigms of medical dreams, based upon his opening statement that ‘content cannot distinguish a medical dream from other kinds. Only the act of interpretation gives a dream informative or predictive character and value’. Pearcy's discussion leads to the next article, a presentation of medical dreams in the Ἱεροὶ Λόγοι of Aelius Aristides. J. Downie's interpretative approach, that Aristides was not only interested in the hermeneutics of dreams, but also in their appropriation for the purposes of rhetoric, is nuanced and convincing. However, on occasion the point was pushed too far, as for example in the instance where the complex syntax of Aristides is viewed as ‘destabilizing’ and ‘problematizing interpretation’. Adventurous syntax, sometimes going as far as challenging the rules of grammar, is the modus auctoris in this case, and in my opinion cannot be taken as evidence of interpretative problem or failure. C. Walde discusses the central work on dreams extant in Greek literature, the Oneirocritica of Artemidorus. Anyone with a faint familiarity with Artemidorus would be aware of a seeming contradiction in the use of certain signifiers and at the same time the unpredictability of such signifiers in the interpretation of dreams. Walde rightly argues that ‘he relies on flexible imagery built on associations’, and poses that in our difficulty to understand fully the method of Artemidorus we lack context and perhaps we have not been asking the right questions. She also rejects the influential position advocated by J. Winkler in his classic work The Constraints of Desire (1990) that the Oneirocritica offers a direct glimpse into the real life of the ancients. At the end of her article Walde offers some useful statistics on medical dreams.
In the opening article on Byzantium I. Csepregi discusses dream-healing miracles in Hagiography. Her central tenet that the relevant texts (miracles of St Thecla, Saints Kosmas and Damian, Saints Cyrus and John, the Thaumata of Sophronius and the miracles of St Artemius) are thematically unified and chronologically close may raise some objections. The placement of these works close to the seventh century does not truly reflect their broad chronological range (second to seventh century) and the thematic unity which Csepregi sees in these works may well be explained as being the result of similar practices in Christian dream-healing shrines. However, Csepregi is undoubtedly correct in seeing an unbroken chain from the sanctuary of Asclepius to the Church of John the Baptist, where St Artemius healed hernias and testicular afflictions through healing dreams, and she offers an excellent analysis of the narrative structures in these stories. S. Constantinou continues the same theme by taking a closer look into the narrative structures of some of these stories, and rightly points out that they typically have a happy ending, even if they contain an element of conflict prior to the resolution and the cure. T.S. Miller argues that healing dream narratives offer valuable additional information about the daily workings and practices of Byzantine hospitals, thus complementing the primary text of the Pantokratôr Typikon. The appendix with a brief list of the sources would be a particularly useful starting point for readers unfamiliar with Byzantine healing narratives. J. Bilbija offers a thorough list of substances from Greek and Roman authors which were supposed to influence the formation of dreams. B. Zipser concludes the Byzantine part of the collection with the presentation of treatments and recipes from a Cypriot manuscript (Wellcome MSL 14).
The final part of the collection on the post-Byzantine and modern periods opens with an informative article by O. on the ἰατροσόϕια (practical healing manuals). O. correctly emphasises that a number of treatments in these works assume a certain understanding of humoral theory and are deeply ingrained in a very long tradition going back to the Hippocratics. C. Stewart offers a fascinating account of the symbolism of field images (πεδιάδα) in Modern Greek dream narratives. The concluding article on New Age healing dreams by J. Dubisch brings together the entire tradition from ancient times to the present in the Greek geographical and cultural space, and one might share Dubisch's final sentiment about ‘the treasures that can be found when one journeys into the hidden world of dreams’.
A general bibliography for the entire volume, although it would have added to the size of the book, would have been very useful for researchers interested in the broad array of topics covered here. However, this disadvantage is countered by the excellent quality of the presentations, the captivating topics, the exciting material and the very readable style of most presentations. With such advantages the collection is recommended for teaching purposes, and makes enticing and informative reading.
