The most solitary of afflictions: madness and society in Britain, 1700–1900

Stol's work is a volume of far wider interest than its title would suggest. It is precisely for these reasons, however, that this reviewer ventures to raise a few cautionary points. First, to identify the Akkadian bennu specifically as "epilepsy" implies that-at least in this case-the Babylonians 3,000 years ago organized disease phenomena into symptoms and causes in ways similar to those of modem medicine. But in ancient and medieval times, and in many cultures, what are now regarded as symptoms were then considered "diseases" in their own right, for example "fever" in Greek and Arab-Islamic medicine. In the Akkadian texts there are similar indications for bennu, which is sometimes described as an epidemic disease and contagious (epilepsy is neither) or paired with "leprosy" as the inner manifestation of some other disease. Stol is undoubtedly right in seeing epilepsy in many accounts of bennu, but in others it seems to mean nothing more specific than "convulsions" or "fits", and this of course raises an important problem-obvious cases excepted, how is one to distinguish among these varying usages? A second consideration may be raised concerning the epithets and titles used in association with bennu in Akkadian texts. Stol views these as the names of Babylonian gods and demons believed to figure as causes or agents of epilepsy, and in some cases this must be correct. In the ancient Near East, however, the name of a deity or spirit in one era could survive later as nothing more than a word designating the affliction with which it had once been associated. A prominent example is the name of the Canaanite god of pestilence, Reshep, which in Old Testament Hebrew is demoted to merely one of several general words for "pestilence". It should perhaps be asked how many Akkadian terms (e.g., "Spawn of gulpaea", "Lord of the Roof', "Hand of the God") reflect similar transformations, and would therefore have to be excluded from the demonology associated with bennu. Finally, one might query the prominent dichotomy between rational medicine and irrational magic which informs this book's discussion. The former is applauded and identified with Greek medicine, especially Hippocrates, who "showed mankind the way out of the realm of magical lore" (p. 2) in his On the sacred disease. Apart from the question of whether or not the historical Hippocrates is the author of this treatise, many cultures-modem as well as ancient and medieval-have viewed …