Connections Between Sleep and Medicine in Ancient Greece

This paper will examine the use of sleep and dreams at the heart of Ancient Greek medicine. To start, it will examine the notion of sleep medicine in a modern context to draw parallels to how this is still prevalent to a modern world to provide surface-level context for a modern reader. From there we will examine the origin of the notion of sleep as medicine, examining the roles of Hypnos, the god of sleep, and the Oneiroi who represent dreams in Hesiod’s Theogony and Homer’s Iliad. This will allow for the examination of god-like intervention in the dreams of mortals and the prophetic properties of them. These dreams were analyzed by ancient Greek physicians as a way to connect with the healing gods to perfect their craft and aid their ailing patients. This leads into the cult of Asclepius, members of which would practice the rite of incubation, where they would fall asleep in a sacred space to attempt to connect with the gods and return with information from their dreams to further medical endeavours of physicians in the cult. Through the examination of these dreams physicians were able to link dreams to physical ailments and begin to derive treatments from them as well. This can be examined in Sophoclean tragedy through the practice of the Rite of Incubation and the notion of madness associated with sleep. Through each of these examinations, the thesis will examine how sleep and dreams were integral to the practicing of medicine in ancient Greece