Wendoline Gamez
Professor Stephanie
RHE 309K
March 5, 2012

Rhetorical Analysis: On the Sacred Disease
In the article “On the Sacred Disease” by Hippocrates, an ancient Greek physician who was considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine, argues his opinion about  the disease called sacred, appearing to him that “it is not to be nowise more divine nor more sacred that other diseases” (Hippocrates). He supports this claim by first describing the types of people who were considered to be “excessively religious” ages ago. Then, he adds “suitable reasons” about the treatment and the use of different elements describing what is safe for them like “applying purifications and incantations, and enforcing abstinence form baths and many articles of food which are unwholesome to men in diseases”(Hippocrates). Toward the end of the essay, he applies his own logical knowledge of how the cause of illness is no longer divine but human. Hippocrates purpose is to acknowledge how and why the human body becomes ill, in order to explain his counterarguments and establishing the right way the body becomes ill with his superior knowledge abut the human body. He establishes a very complex text which was hard to understand. This article was written 400 B.C.E and translated by Francis Adams. Although this article was written ages ago, his opinion made history of medicine. This work is significant because it challenges those in the Health field to rethink about the history of medicine.

Hippocrates establishes counterarguments through out his article; he supports his arguments with scientific facts which made his text more persuasive. According to Hippocrates he “will show, there are others no less wonderful and prodigious, which nobody images to be sacred” (Hippocrates 1).  He supports this claim by describing the people who believed in referring a disease to a god, then he states, “Such persons, then, using the divinity as a pretext and screen of their own inability to of their own inability to afford any assistance, have given out that the disease is sacred”(Hippocrates). This is the way Hippocrates went on with his logical reasoning throughout the article, first addressing what the assumptions were then he would break it down into a comparison to the brain and then explain thoroughly what it really means.

Hereditary like other diseases, a “phlegmatic person be born of phlegmatic, and bilious of a bilious, and a phthisical of a phthisical, and one having spleen disease, of another having disease of the spleen, what is to hinder it from happening that where the father and mother were subject to this disease, certain of their offspring should be so affected also?”(Hippocrates). Basically explaining how the cause of a disease can be genetically transmitted or transmittable from parent to offspring. This is how his logic reasons made his article persuasive but he lacks emotional appeal toward his audience by using the word “ignorance” to attract his opponent. When he was explaining the men who are custom to use elements of nature they consider the cause to be divine, therefore they are lacking knowledge about the human body and how it works.

Then he establishes an irony: the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning. The changes in the winds have a significant power towards the body. Hippocrates illustrated through this statement: “it possesses such powers over things so grate and strong, and the body is made to feel and undergo changes in the changes of the winds, it necessarily follows that the brain should be dissolved and overpowered with moisture, and that the veins should become more relaxed by the south winds, and that by the north the healthiest portion of the rain should become contracted, while the most morbid and humid is secreted, and overflows externally, and that catarrhs should thus take place in the changes of these winds”. He makes a connection towards the body by explaining how the “effects” of the winds can cause a change in the body, “cloudy, from cold, hot; from dry... ” Therefore, explaining a disease that forms and “prevails from those things which enter into and go out of the body, and it is not more difficult to understand or to cure than the other, neither is it more divine than other diseases”(Hippocrates). This is the text in the article of how Hippocrates establishes his way of thinking and reasoning, making his argument logic and specific for the reader to understand.

Throughout the text Hippocrates always went back on the significant power of the brain. As he states, “as long as the brain is at rest, the man enjoys his reason,” basically saying that when the brain is not in disposes to cause harm the body is at rest. Hippocrates states, “the brain exercises the grates power in the man” because “it is the brain which is the messenger to the understanding”. Making a connection with the heart he explains how “Some say that we think with the heart, an that this is the part which is grieved, and experience care” (Hippocrates). The brain has control over our emotions which our emotions have an effect on our body. He claims that “all the most acute, most powerful, and most deadly diseases, and those which are most difficult to be understood by the inexperience, fall upon the brain” (Hippocrates). He explains the challenges the brain goes through which impacts the body is what makes the cause of illness so divine.

Hippocrates establishes counterarguments in his article which he supported with scientific facts and logical reasoning. He has created a starting block for physicians who are studying the history of medicine, “physician should understand and distinguish the season of and injurious to another” (Hippocrates). He is pointing out how a physician should look into the history of the illness in order to understand and distinguish the cause of the disease. His teachings of clinical observations has probably influenced many readers of his works and had much to do with freeing ancient medicine from superstition. One of the most important factors about people’s lives is the information and the use of the growing knowledge of medicine had been influenced by Hippocrates believes and that is what he was most known for; one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine.

 

Works Cited

"Hippocrates." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 03 Apr. 2012. Web. 05 Mar. 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocrates>.

"Irony." Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com. Web. 05 Mar. 2012. <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/irony>.

"On the Sacred Disease by Hippocrates." The Internet Classics Archive: 441 Searchable      Works of Classical Literature. Trans. Francis Adams. b.c.e. Web. 05 Mar. 2012. <http://classics.mit.edu/Hippocrates/sacred.html>.