Helen Rhee: Pain at the Intersection of Ancient Medicine and Early Christianity: Paradox of Agency and Insharability

Pain in ancient medicine (Hippocratic Corpus, Aretaeus and Galen) played a central role in diagnosis as a sign of disease but also functioned as part of the therapeutic process and prognosis in a complex patient-doctor relationship. Pain in patristic treatises likewise had a double role to play on the continuum of illness and health (both physical and spiritual). My paper examines how pain blurs and problematizes a dichotomy of illness/disease and health in the intersections of medical and patristic texts with its affective and social effect through its paradoxical agency and insharability.