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Illness or Symptom?

Bácskay, András (2006) Illness or Symptom? Acta Antiqua, 46 (1-2). pp. 17-23. ISSN 0044-5975

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Abstract

It has been obvious for a long time that the so-called symptom descriptions in the source groups of Mesopotamian medicine (particularly in prescriptions of therapeutic and diagnostical/prognostic texts) cannot be exclusively applied to specific diseases, as the same symptoms appear in connection with a variety of illnesses, and symptom descriptions relating to individual diseases can be very varied. Although several attempts have been made by researchers to describe the ancient Mesopotamian culture's system of ideas about illness, no unambiguous scientific answer has as yet been provided to the question what relationship exists between the symptoms and illnesses mentioned. Due to the lack of an exact understanding of ancient Mesopotamia's conceptual framework concerning symptoms and diseases, and the modern approaches to the given texts from the viewpoint of our own culture's taxonomy of the related field, we have achieved a state of significant conceptual discrepancies. Recent research has attempted to clarify some of the issues. Below I am giving a short summary of the results in this field. Following that I am providing a brief description of my approach to the Babylonian medical terminology.

Item Type: Article
Subjects: P Language and Literature / nyelvészet és irodalom > PA Classical philology / klasszika-filológia
Depositing User: xKatalin xBarta
Date Deposited: 23 Jan 2017 09:04
Last Modified: 23 Jan 2017 09:04
URI: http://real.mtak.hu/id/eprint/45815

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