Con gli occhi di chi soffre. Le metafore dei malati tra Ippocrate e Galeno

Metaphors, similitudes and linguistic experiments are widely spread in ancient medical writings. The Hippocratic physicians, for example, often employ terms and expressions coming from everyday language, but with a new, eminently medical meaning, in their struggle to technicise their vocabulary. But also the patients, the laymen would draw upon similitudes, images and metaphors to voice their suffering. This is precisely the scope of this paper: I intend to shed light on the different kinds, functions and purposes of the images employed by the patients. As I will show, their similitudes and metaphors tend to come from everyday life, whereas those of the physicians tend to compare the illness under scrutiny to others already known (and potentially knowable to the patients as well). Moreover, reading some passages from Galen’s workings, I will also try to point out what kind of theoretical assumptions were entailed by the medical scrutiny of the patients’ metaphors and similitudes. As a general result, linguistic experimenting will turn out to represent a significant aspect of ancient Greek medicine.