Les maladies dans l'art antique (review)

Mirko Grmek and Danielle Gourevitch. Les maladies dans l'art antique. Penser la médecine. Paris: Fayard, 1998. 518 pp. Ill. F. 180.00 (paperbound).

The method of this book is simple. It is to survey depictions of pathology in ancient art, and to ask in each case, "What would the modern diagnosis be?" The book's organization follows from the method. Ten of its thirteen chapters focus on different sorts of affliction: wounds, poisonings, madness, emaciation, obesity, anomalies of height, afflictions of the head and neck, afflictions of the eyes, afflictions of the limbs, and pathologies related to sex. Within each of these broad categories, the authors go on to identify more specific conditions. Among problems related to the limbs, for instance, they find examples of polydactylism, dislocations, atrophy, elephantiasis, thrombophlebitis, and rheumatism.

This is a serious monograph composed with scholarly care. It is clearly written, generously illustrated, and presents an impressive wealth of materials and information. By making use of its analytical table of contents and two indices--one of names, and the other of medical terms--one could consult it as a sort of handbook of art and suffering in antiquity. Although, as evident from their ample and helpful bibliography, Grmek and Gourevitch take due account of the extensive prior scholarship on the subject, they avoid the more tendentious diagnoses sometimes found in this literature. They freely acknowledge the impossibility, in regard to many of the figures, of unambiguous diagnoses, and are duly cautious about reading medical meaning into what may be mere artistic whim or convention.

Les maladies, then, carries out its project with reassuring, balanced competence. But some readers may question the project itself. What do we learn, in the end, from modern diagnoses of ancient artistic figures? The authors promise that such diagnoses can provide valuable information about ancient pathologies--that they can shed fresh light on the frequency and existence of diseases, and their social and psychological impact. But this their argument is not entirely persuasive.

It seems doubtful, to begin with, that we can really learn much about the frequency of afflictions. For one thing, the sample provided by ancient art is too small and scattered to be statistically meaningful. For another, some afflictions, because of the fear or curiosity that they inspired, appear far more frequently in pictures and sculptures than their actual incidence in the population would warrant--as Grmek and Gourevitch themselves note with regard to the recurrent depictions of stunted growth. Demonstrating the existence of a disease would seem a much easier proposition, since here a single example suffices. But even in this case, finding conclusive evidence is hard. Because disparate diseases can produce similar manifestations, it is often impossible to determine with certainty from an ancient picture or statue that we confront a patient with a specific disease. And indeed, the authors have turned up little by way of unexpected pathologies.

Ultimately, the theme about which this survey promises the most illumination is the ancient perception of, and response to, sickness. The opening chapter explicitly raises a deep and important puzzle: Why should art sometimes be devoted to representing the ugliness of sickness and deformity? What fascinations inspire artists to depict, and viewers to delight in, the sight of the wretched and infirm? Although Grmek and Gourevitch do not follow through on the question--sticking resolutely instead, after a suggestive but fleeting nod toward Aristotle's theory of imitation, to the stated task of rendering modern diagnoses--the weighty accumulation of suffering figures in Les maladies imbues the question with considerable urgency, and invites further inquiries. The recurrence of votive icons among these figures hints that an essential topic in any such study would be the religious and magical significance of images.

Shigehisa Kuriyama
International Research Center for Japanese Studies
Kyoto

...