ANCIENT CHINESE, GREEK AND ROMAN VIEW ON HEALTH

Today I wanted to post a discussion that relates to early Greek, Roman and Chinese medicine. It includes Greek and Roman Gods/Goddesses and Chinese Demons.

I’m unsure as to what most of you know about ancient history, in particular health, sickness, and healing? So this post is a brief look at some different deities in ancient times and how they were used to maintain health and for curing diseases. I am going to barely touch the surface here but the hope is that it will engage conversation between us all.

In ancient China, in particular pre-Han dynasty (earlier than 206BCE) the Chinese believed that staying healthy meant one had to worship their ancestors plus try to protect themselves from demons as well as sorcerers that wielded black magic (contact or homeopathic magic). This was considered the extent of staying healthy. There was no ownership on looking after your health; as in, if an ancestor considered your worship inadequate they could still make you sick. Alternatively a demon could invade your body for ‘shits and giggles’, or a sorcerer could gain access to a piece of you (for example, some of your hair) which could then be used to injure your whole self/being.

One particularly interesting demon was called Tai Yi (pronounced Tie Eeee). He was a demon that travelled through the sky at incredible speed. This haste stirred up a lot of wind which he could use to benefit, or injure, individual people or large populations. He wasn’t picky! In this way he could aid you in war by swinging the direction of wind to your advantage; he could also change his mind and swing the wind back against you for no specific reason. You could win wars with Tai Yi assisting you or you could lose wars because he supported the opposition soldiers. Tai Yi didn’t have to have a say in wars necessarily, he could also use wind to favour or hinder crop production; he could blow you off a mountain or help blow you up a mountain (I’ve been told it’s always nicer when climbing mountains if the wind is at your back).

In addition, if he was particularly bored he could invade your body, but this could only happen whilst you were sleeping. You see when you sleep the Chinese believe that your Hun (Ethereal/Heavenly Soul) leaves your body to travel the world, thereby leaving space for some other maleficent being (either a demon or someone else’s Hun) to enter your body. Essentially you wake up and you are a completely different person. You are then under their control until a healing sorcerer/soothsayer rocks up and does his exorcism thing, thereby allowing the evil influence to leave so your Hun can come back into your body.

Interestingly one of the ways this was done was to use moxibustion smudging. Demons, including Tai Yi, were considered anthropomorphic, and mugwort/artemisia vulgaris/moxa was abhorrent to demons. Not only did they hate the smell, but they couldn’t see where they were going because they were blinded by the smoke. Moxa smudging could be used both as a preventative as well as a purgative when maleficent beings were near.

Pepper corns were another popular item used to keep demons at bay. Sprinkled around your sleeping body it acted in a similar manner to moxa. Please note that different sources dispute the claim that pepper was known to (and used by) the Chinese in pre-Han times.

Regardless, it wasn’t until the Han dynasty (206BCE-220CE), and specifically after the Yellow Emperor text (Huang Di Nei Jing) was written, that there was a definite shift to more of a personal ownership on health. This discussion is for another time however. Let’s now shift to ancient Greek times.

In ancient Greece, Hippocrates, Aristotle, and others, changed the face of Western medicine. This was around 400-200BCE, but even so, the vast majority of people still used the Gods as a means to staying healthy. The two Gods/Goddesses I want to briefly discuss here are the Goddess Tyche (pronounced Tie Key) and the God Asclepius.

Tyche was the Goddess of luck, fortune, and prosperity. Greeks would worship her to ensure they had good fortune in whatever it is that they asked for. In this particular discussion they would worship Tyche for continuing good health. Having said that she was a lot like the Chinese demon Tai Yi, in that she wasn’t picky, and worshipping her didn’t necessarily guarantee good health indefinitely.

She is often pictured blindfolded carrying a ‘Horn of Plenty’ (also called a cornucopia) in one hand and juggling a ball in the other. If she is not juggling a ball she is balancing a set of scales. She is depicted as blindfolded because she is indifferent towards anyone or anything (she doesn’t want to know who you are, what your fame/infamy is, how rich or poor you are). Her cornucopia is filled to overflowing with gifts which she could shower upon anyone at any time. Her ball or scales depict her weighing up of whether to give you something good or something bad. Similar to Tai Yi, she could positively or negatively impact on individuals or entire communities. And as previously mentioned, she didn’t care if you worshipped her or not; praying to her for good fortune didn’t guarantee that bad things wouldn’t happen to you.

Asclepius was the God of medicine and, similar to Tyche, Greeks would worship Asclepius as a means to ensuring good health, or a speedy recovery from disease. Interestingly he could also be worshipped to bring a loved one back from the dead. According to several sources he was gifted the blood of Medusa after she died (by Athena) and he was able to fashion a resurrection spell using his famous staff with the snake wrapped around it.

http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photo-snake-isolated-image7581975

Asclepius had anywhere from nine to eleven children depending on the source (regardless, he was a busy man!); 5 or 6 girls and 4 or 5 boys. His offspring were all worshipped for their connection with health (in their own right) by the ancient Greeks. Of particular interest is one of his daughters and one of his sons. Her name was Hygieia, and as you can probably guess she was the Goddess of hygiene and cleanliness; and the son worth mentioning was called Panacea, which again you can probably guess, made him the God of remedying difficult diseases.

Regardless of whether you prayed to the Gods/Goddesses, there was no guarantee of good health or of healing once sick/injured.

In ancient Roman times health and healing had come a long way, and would continue to evolve at a rapid rate, especially after Galen emerged (129CE-210CE). But for our discussion we need to remain in pre-Christian Rome (roughly before 50CE). Like the Greeks before them, the Romans had Gods/Goddesses for everything. And their equivalents to Tyche and Asclepius were the Goddess Fortuna, and the God Vejovis. Having said that, the Romans (and Greeks for that matter) had lots of different deities for health, healing and medicine!

Fortuna and Vejovis were venerated to ensure continuing good health, or a rapid recovery from disease. There were some minor differences such as the Goddess Fortuna was holding a ships rudder rather than a ball or scales; she still had the cornucopia in the other hand. However, short of repeating past comments, these Gods/Goddesses worked similar to their Greek equivalents.

The one extra item I would like to add within the Roman view is from my favourite Western philosopher of all time. His name was Seneca (4BCE-65CE) and lived during the tumultuous rule of the following Roman Emperors – Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. Of particular interest here is the last three, and whilst Claudius himself isn’t supposed to have been a tyrant ruler, he did exile Seneca to a tiny island in the Mediterranean for eight long years before being recalled to Rome in 49CE to act as tutor of the then 12 year old Nero.

During Seneca’s life he ran into an incredibly large amount of injustice and misfortune, not always upon himself; in fact most of the time it was on people that he knew. He became so disgruntled about ‘The Lot’ of Romans that he grew immensely aggrieved and he laid all this resentment onto the Goddess Fortuna. So much so that he eventually created a daily meditation (not a worship or a prayer) that he would start every day saying. This is what he would say:

“The wise will start each day with the thought, ‘Fortune gives us nothing which we can really own.’ Nothing, whether public or private, is stable; the destinies of men, no less than those of cities, are in a whirl. Whatever structure has been reared by a long sequence of years, at the cost of great toil and through the great kindness of the gods, is scattered and dispersed in a single day. No, he who has said ‘a day’ has granted too long a postponement to swift misfortune; an hour, an instant of time, suffices for the overthrow of empires. How often have cities in Asia, how often in Achaia, been laid low by a single shock of earthquake? How many towns in Syria, how many in Macedonia, have been swallowed up? How often has this kind of devastation laid Cyprus in ruins? We live in the middle of things which have all been destined to die. Mortal have you been born, to mortals you have given birth. Reckon on everything, expect everything.

Seneca

Wow! “Reckon on everything; expect everything!” Hop in the car to drive to work requires one to prepare for a HUGE crash where loved ones die; blood everywhere; expect worst case scenario. Definitely not what most ‘New Age’ authors would say that’s for sure! But in some ways, and this is the kicker, it prepares you if, in the unlikely event, that something bad does happen. This was his trick you see. By expecting the worst, if the worst happens you are prepared and therefore you will react with less of an emotional response, which allows you to get over the event faster. When the worst case scenario doesn’t happen then it’s been a bloody good day. What a fascinatingly disturbing way to look at life. 

Ultimately, Seneca didn’t just avoid worshipping the Goddess Fortuna, he ‘DARED HER’ to have a crack at him. And, whilst it took the Goddess Fortuna 69 years to do it, she eventually gave Seneca worst case scenario. He was ordered to commit suicide by order of the Emperor Nero, who believed, rightly or wrongly, that Seneca was conspiring against him to take the throne for himself. A guard shows up at Seneca’s mansion (he was incredibly rich) and orders him to immediately kill himself. He started to write a will but he was taking too long. His wife wanted to commit suicide alongside Seneca but she wasn’t allowed. So he slit his wrists but the blood didn’t flow fast enough for the centurion and he ordered him to cut more blood vessels so he opened up vessels in his ankles and then behind his knees. Still he wouldn’t die so Seneca ordered some hemlock (poisonous alkaloid of the parsley plant) to be brewed up, much to the guards disgust. Hemlock works in a similar manner to fly spray or strychnine poisoning; as in, it forces the muscles in the body (including the heart) to involuntarily contract and relax which looks a lot like the patient is suffering from severe seizures. Eventually the heart contracts and doesn’t relax again and the person dies. Alternatively the person dies of asphyxiation. It’s all rather unpleasant apparently but after two doses of hemlock Seneca still wasn’t dead. So the guards shoved him in a steam bath where, depending on differing reports, the heat increased the blood flow again from his slit vessels and he died of blood loss, or he suffocated. Worst case scenario death? You think?

So is it better to pray to the Gods/Goddesses/Demons/Ancestors or run the gamut like Seneca?

To close, what I find particularly interesting here is that the Chinese, Greeks, and Romans had a similar view on health, healing and medicine, with similar deities to represent this. Some of the Gods/Goddesses even had similar names and pronunciations. For example, the Chinese Demon Tai Yi (pronounced Tie Eeee) and the Greek Goddess Tyche (pronounced Tie Key).

This is not even remotely surprising when it comes to the Greeks and Romans because geographically they were near to one another, plus the Romans invaded the Greeks and became one of the biggest super-powers in ancient history. But it’s a very different story with the Chinese. For starters the ‘Silk Road’ which connected the East with the West hadn’t started operating during this era. In fact there is nothing that I have read that suggests the Greeks/Romans had ever had contact with the Chinese. The main reason for this was Persia, which sat between the two countries and was a super-power in its own right. So how/why did two completely different cultures share similar views on health?

In addition, the Chinese had Emperors and were Autocratic, whereas the Greeks had a Senate and were Democratic. So the citizens lived in very different societies which, for the most part, resulted in very different views on things. Further to this, the countries had different climates; relied on different means of transport; had different fruits/vegetables/herbs/domestic animals; and were prey to completely different diseases/enemies.

So what does this all result in? Well that’s where you all come in. I would love you to offer up your views on anything within this post, whether it is about the deities, or the comments on health. Whatever! You might like to agree with aspects of the post or disagree; the post might prompt you to ask further questions which is great; either way I would love to get us all talking about this topic. Constructive feedback is highly encouraged.

The idea here is that in the future I post on the next stage of Eastern and Western medical development, because there were significant changes made in a very short space of time in both cultures. But in the meantime this post lays the groundwork by exploring a period in history that is often neglected when one discusses healthcare.

Take care and talk soon.

David Hartmann

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*BCE = Before Current Era, CE = Current Era; secular/nonspiritual based

*BC = Before Christ, AD = Anno Domini (In the year of our Lord); Church/spiritual based