ABSTRACT
The history of western medicine shows its origins not only in the physical and empirical, but in practices that can only be described as divinatory. Medicine itself was often considered to be not of human, but divine, origin. Two giants in the field of Greek medicine, Hippocrates (the Hippocratic writers) and Galen, both incorporate divinatory practices among their techniques of diagnosis and prescription. This chapter examines the relationship of divination to ancient Greek medicine, including similarities between the two disciplines, along with divination’s rationality as a system of knowledge. However, the primary focus of the chapter will be on those practices specifically linked to astrological divination and medicine. Featured will be the doctrine of decumbiture, the practice of casting and interpreting an astrological chart for the time a patient is ill enough to go to bed. As an example of katarchic astrology, decumbiture developed more and more as a part of the Greek medical arsenal by late antiquity. Both doctors and astrologers proficient in astrological medicine employed the technique. The practice of decumbiture within medicine has infrequently been discussed in depth by scholars; this chapter hopes to remedy that lack.
