L'astragalo di Dario

After hunting, the king of Persians Darius I gets off a horse in a quite rough way and gets a sprain in which the astragalus becomes dislocated. The wise Egyptian physicians on duty at his court cannot heal the shooting pain which keeps him awake for a week. By chance, Democedes, the famous physician from Croton, happens to be at Persian court as a slave and Darius, finding out about it, doesn’t esitate to commit himself to his healing which turns out to be providential. This tale, which in its richest and most interesting version came to us thanks to the Greek historian Herodotus, allows not only a reflection upon the ancient therapeutical approaches to the sprains, thanks to the comparison with Hippocratic treaties on fractures and articulations, but also some anatomical considerations on the interaction between astragalus and the articulations it is connected with.