Quando la malattia nasce, cresce e muore «con» (συν-) il paziente. Terminologia del male congenito nel Corpus ippocratico

Abstract

The present study aims to investigate the use and semantics of the most common terminology used by the medical writers of the Hippocratic Collection in order to define diseases commonly considered to be of a “congenital” nature, with particular attention to nominal as well as verbal forms, composed by the prefixation syn-, indicating the different stages of the pathological process according to which disease is represented as a proper entity claimed to arise inside the patient, to develop, to became old and then also to die together with him or her. Individual constitution, familiarity, epigenetic factors such as conditions of growth during gestation or climatic conditions, age of the patient as well as timing of the disease onset are the complex elements which are to be taken into account by the physician, whose task is to recognize the morbid signs at the right time in order to apply the adequate therapy.