ARISTOPHANES WEALTH - ANCIENT ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE AND ITS MODERN SURVIVAL

The miraculous cure of the blind god Plutos ('Wealth') in Aristophanes ' play illuminates some of the reasons why people have sought help in alternative medicine over the ages. Apart from limitations of conventi onal medicine these factors can be social, political, religious, psych ological, and scientific. Alternative medicine may function in a compl ementary way to the conventional. Nevertheless, an overestimation of i ts therapeutic potentials by the public can lead to the domination of irrationalism, all in the name of liberation from the shackles of a me chanistic rationalism.