Hippocratic principles were directly opposed to magic and ritual. However, the continuing success throughout antiquity of the cult of Asclepius shows very clearly that medicine was never fully divorced from its religious connections. Beginning in the sixth century BCE, health resorts, or sanctuaries, known as Asklepia (because they were presided over by the god of healing Asclepius) sprang up all over the Mediterranean.The cult of Asclepius was at the same time a religion and a system of therapeutics. His sanctuaries, such as those at Tricca, Epidauros, Cos and Pergamon, were built outside the towns on particularly healthy sites. In these Asklepia special rites were observed. After purificatory preparation, baths, fasting and sacrifices, the patient would spend the night in the god’s precinct or temple, a process known as “sleeping in” (enkoimesis, incubatio).The fashion of incubation seems not to have really caught on until the fourth century when the great healing centers as Cos and Epidauros were established. Thus, we have rational and thaumaturgic medicine, i.e. dream therapy, developing together through the Hellenistic period pari passu, i.e. in equal steps, rather in the manner of astronomy and astrology.During the night as the patient slept, Asclepius would appear to the patient in a dream and give him advice. In the morning the priests would interpret the dream and explain the god’s precepts. Patients would thank Asclepius by tossing gold into the sacred fountain and by hanging ex-votos on the walls of the temple.

Relief from Epidauros, 4th Century BCE In the panel above a temple physician massages a patient's shoulder while a priestess, serving as a nurse, looks on. Ex-voto from Epdauros, 3rd Century BCE Although medical treatment was free at Asklepia, a recovered patient was expected to make a votive offering, which sometimes took the form of a replica of the afflicted organ or limb. A patient is shown dedicating a large votive leg to the god in thanks for curing his varicose veins. A large vein is visible on the model leg.

There are hundreds of extant inscriptions and votive reliefs recounting the individual cures of patients at the Asklepia. The following exempla were found at the ruins of the Asklepion in Epidauros:

 

Silver tetradrachm, Epidauros, 350-330 BCE This coin was minted at Epidauros, the site of the great healing sanctuary of Asclepius. The god became a symbol of the city. He is shown on the reverse of the coin accompanied by a serpent. The letter E to the right of the figure is short for Epidauros.

Ambrosia, a woman of Athens, was blind in one eye. After laughing at some of the cures by which the lame and the blind were healed merely by seeing a dream she seems to see Asclepius standing beside her and saying that he would cure her if she would promise afterwards to dedicate a silver pig as a memorial of her ignorance. Then he cut the diseased eyeball and poured in some drug. When day came she walked out sound. Agestratus was cured of headaches which were so severe he was never able to sleep. Gorgias, having a suppurating wound made by an arrow that had pierced his chest, slept beside an altar and awakened with a sound skin holding the arrow point in his hand. Euhippus had had a spear point fixed in his jaw for six years. As he was sleeping in the temple Asclepius pulled out the spearhead and gave it into his hands. When day came Euhippus departed cured and holding the spearhead in his hands.

The Healing of Archinus, ex-voto tablet, Athens, National Museum, c. 370 BCE

This famous dedication was made by one Archinus at the healing shrine of the hero Amphiaraus at Oropus, on the borders of Boeotia and Attica. In such a cult, the votive usually commemorates the god’s act of healing. Here the representation is very complex. The cult at Oropus was one of incubation, and on the right we duly see the patient asleep on a couch. In the left foreground, the hero Amphiaraus, like a human doctor, is actually treating the patient’s right shoulder: this scene represents the supposed content of Archinus’ dream. But in the scene on the right a sacred snake, a healing animal, is also shown licking or biting the same right shoulder of the sleeping patient: this is the same cure as it would supposedly have appeared to a waking observer. Behind can be seen, on a pillar, a votive stele--like the one dedicated by Archinus himself. And perhaps the figure on the right is yet a third representation of Archinus, in this case gratefully dedicating his stele.

The cult of Asclepius also existed in Rome after 291 BCE. No trace of the sanctuary of Asclepius in Rome exists, but the cult was immensely popular as evidenced by the terra cottas depicting parts of the human body, often at greater than life size, that were dedicated by the afflicted at healing sanctuaries. More than 100 sanctuaries in Italy are known, the majority in western-central Italy, and while not all were presided over by Asclepius (for other deities like Diana at Nemi assumed curative powers), it is nevertheless clear that the inspiration for the idea stemmed ultimately from the temple in Rome itself.

Other cult centers sprang up across Italy. Study of the terra cottas from these precincts reveals the emergence of some specialized centers in healing. At Ponte di Nona, e.g., a rural complex some 15 kilometers to the east of Rome, the collections are dominated by feet and hands--precisely the parts of the body which are likely to suffer damage in the course of agricultural work. In the town of Veii, on the other hand, the terra cottas from the Campetti sanctuary contain a huge proportion of male and female sexual organs. If not associated with some form of fertility cult, these may well hint at a high incidence of sexually transmitted diseases, of a sort that might well be picked up in an urban brothel.

Votive terra cotta offerings from Cerveteri, Etruria, now in Museo Gregoriano Etrusco, 3rd century BCE

This collection of votive terra cottas reveals for us what the Romans knew of anatomy. The hand (below) and foot (right) are painted red, therefore they represented the limbs of a male since, in ancient Mediterranean art, the flesh of men is painted red and that of women is white or pink. The sculpture was made in a mold that had been reused a number of times; consequently, sculptured details like the fingernails are only faintly visible. The esophagus, stomach, intestine and kidneys are visible in this curious representation of the digestive organs (left). It was offered as a gift to a divinity either in gratitude for healing or else as a plea for healing.