ABSTRACT
This introduction presents the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book deals with the phenomenon of healing dreams in pagan and Christian religion. It is organized into three chronological periods: antiquity, Byzantium, and post-Byzantium to the current day. Matthew Ramsey, in his analysis of eighteenth- and nineteen-century French medicine, sees a variety of healers operating beyond elite medical professionals. The attraction of Arthur Kleinman's theory is that it demonstrates the existence of medical pluralism, and how competing and coexistent medical traditions operate, in a culture. Thus, in a model of medical pluralism, the religious must be accorded a prominent place. Here David Gentilcore's medical pluralism model for early modern Italy works beautifully. The chapter examines an eighteenth-century dream book that incorporates material from iatrosophia. The iatrosophion, is a physician's notebook of recipes and treatments or the collective compendium of classical and Byzantine medical and pharmacological texts consulted in hospital settings.
