Gustave Liétard et Palmyr Cordier: Travaux sur l'histoire de la médecine indienne. Un demi-siècle de recherches āyurvédiques

own experience, and his substantial account, at the end of his commentary on Epidemics VI, of the relationship between mental states and illness does not mention self-inflicted death. His acquaintances worry themselves to death at the loss of a friend, a relative, or even imperial favour. Their shame or irrational fear leads to illness, not to self-murder. This gap can hardly be put down, as is suggested on p. 158, to an imperfectly developed Greek psychiatry, cf. e.g., P. Manuli and M. Vegetti, Le operepsicologiche di Galeno (1988), and may simply be due to the hazards of transmission. Three quibbles: the numbering of the notes on p. 36 goes awry; p. 46, Erasistratus' part in the love story of Antiochus is very far from certain; and, p. 146, when John Donne wrote Biathanatos, he was recent convert from Roman Catholicism, not the reverse.