The spleen and kidney (1)

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Stars can be efficacious in healing illness since they may have been its cause. The spleen and kidney ailments are associated with the planets Jupiter and Mars. The first and the only known Babylonian example of melothesia - distribution of parts of the body to the planets - occurs in the commentary to a medical text. The first entry is “If a man’s spleen hurts him”; this is followed by the phrase that normally introduces a comment: “as they say - in the spleen = Jupiter”. A lexical equation, ŠÀ.GIG = ṭu-li-mu ‘spleen’ ends the quote. The next entry is similarly structured: “If a man’s kidney hurts him, (the disease comes from) Nergal, as they say: ‘The Kidney-star is Mars.’” In this last comment the phrase “Nergal is Mars”, has been omitted. It is well known, from Ptolemy and others, that Mars “governs” the kidneys; Jupiter “governs” the liver and the stomach.

Bibliography

Amar Annus

URL for this entry: http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/database/gen_html/a0001335.php