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1 results

  • Chapter 9 - Sleep in post-Hellenistic sources

  • from Part II - Sleep
  • Andrés Pelavski, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
  • Book:
    Impaired Consciousness in Ancient Medical Texts
    Published online:
    04 December 2025
    Print publication:
    04 December 2025, pp 110-132
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  • Summary

    Like their forerunners, post-Hellenistic doctors also grappled with the unclear boundaries between healthy versus pathologic sleep, and consciousness-unconsciousness. Furthermore, they incorporated new diseases and redefined others - like lethargy - that were specifically associated with this process. Celsus considered sleep as all-or-nothing phenomenon, without recognising different depths. Regarding mental capacities, he subsumed most of them in his idea of mens/animus. Aretaeus, on the other hand did conceive different depths of sleep, and his eclectic method enabled him to find alternative pathophysiological explanations to characterise several of its main features. Similarly, although his organization of mental capacities varied according to what he was explaining, the opposition gnômê-aisthêsis was important in his idea of mind.