"But let a grain of sand grit its way into the works, and suddenly everything changes. The most ancient stories we possess tell us this. Gilgamesh and his companion Enkidu barrel through the Mesopotamian landscape, blithely raising hell wherever they go, until fever shoots through Enkidu. Suddenly, the hardened warrior Gilgamesh is dithering around his friend's bed in agonized confusion, the trajectory of his triumphant life halted dead."
"Job luxuriates in his fields and herds and family. Then carnage descends on his livestock and children and his own body, and he sits in the ashes, scraping his boils with a potsherd. His entire world is overthrown, the disorder in his body the last and greatest expression of the family catastrophe. Sickness is not just sickness. Sickness is the most intimate expression of our vexed relationship with reality, the place where smooth functioning suddenly fractures and spins apart without warning."
Our bodies serve as the site where private selves meet the external world, shaping thoughts, emotions, and beliefs. When health prevails, physical influence on mental life remains largely unnoticed. Even a small physical disruption can radically alter perception, behavior, and social roles. Ancient narratives dramatize how illness collapses trajectories of power and prosperity, transforming warriors and prosperous households into sites of vulnerability and existential questioning. Sickness exposes humans to sudden calamity, prompting search for causes, strategies for avoidance, and methods of resistance. Changing explanations for disease reshape moral judgments, social structures, and practical responses to suffering.
Read at www.scientificamerican.com
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