Jessica Wright: Wine, Vapours, and the Brain: John Chrysostom and the Care of the (Embodied) Soul

Chrysostom connected the brain with reason—that is, the part of humanity which was related particularly to the divine (e.g., Hom. in Stat. 11.11). Treatment of the brain, therefore, afforded access to one’s immortal soul: Yet, how was the brain to be “treated”? Famously insensitive to touch (Aristotle, PA 2.7), and furthermore concealed behind a wall of bone, the brain is perhaps the part of the body least susceptible to self-manipulation.* Chrysostom’s solution was to invoke medical paradigms which focused not on how the brain might be manipulated from the outside, but on interactions between the brain and other internal organs. The mode of this interaction was the evaporation of digestive substances into the brain. Such vapours either escaped through orifices in the skull or congested the brain, threatening to flood the blood vessels with phlegm. This model lies behind Chrysostom’s warnings against consuming excess wine (in Comm. in ep. I ad Tim. 13 and the possible spurious De precatione) or excess food (Comm. in Matt. 44.7). Through the control of substances liable to produce such vapours, Chrysostom sought to foster the health of reason, and so to take care of the soul. The brain provided a conceptual resource for understanding the body-soul relationship as it pertained to dietary practice. In this way, the medical explanation for drunkenness offered a physiological model and justification for asceticism as care of the soul.

*Drew Leder, The Absent Body (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1990). 108–115.