Tag: 7th Century
-
Love as illness: Symptomatology
Frank Gonzalez-CrussiChicago, Illinois, United States Is love a disease? I mean erotic, obsessive, knees-a-trembling, passionate love. This is a question on which philosophers have descanted interminably. So have anthropologists, physicians, poets, and, in short, all those who suffer what Juvenal called insanabile cacoethes scribendi1 (“the incurable mania of writing”). All these have set forth their…
-
Tobias and the Angel—Miracle or medical?
Elizabeth Colledge Jacksonville, Florida, United States Admirers of Andrea del Verrocchio’s painting Tobias and the Angel (circa 1470–1475) may be unaware of the purpose of Tobias’s journey with the archangel Raphael. The Book of Tobit in the Apocrypha posits a story of love and not-so-miraculous healing in seventh century B.C. Nineveh. Tobit, a devout Hebrew, suffers…