ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a discussion of sensory experience in Mesopotamian medicine, by embracing approaches from medical and sensory anthropology and from historical studies, in order to explore the roles of the senses in diagnosis and therapy within the cuneiform medical corpus. The aim of the study is to illustrate the range of sensory information described in medical texts, which can refer either to patients’ perceptions or to the medical practitioners’ use of their senses in encounters with patients. Firstly, the chapter discusses the role of different sensory modes and codes within medical diagnosis. Second, it explores the role of different treatment types (such as oral prescriptions, fumigation, ointments) and the properties of medical ingredients (such as colour, smell) in relation to these sensory codes, taking therapeutic agents and processes as markers or signs that encode, through their attributes and properties, certain aspects of the patient’s ailment, and function as mediators that trigger shifts in sensory experience regarded as crucial for healing. By doing so, the aim of the discussion is to elucidate both cross-cultural continuities as well as culture-specific relations between sensory modes and sensory codes encountered in Mesopotamian healing traditions.
