Regimen
There is much in the chapters above about amulets and other apotropaic devices. Can homes be protected systematically against demonic assault? Can the known haunts of demons be avoided? Can the anxiety that demons might provoke be minimized by finding modes of accommodation? To put such questions is to ask in effect if there is an equivalent for the demonic environment of medical diet or regimen.
Some prescriptive texts suggest as much: Peter of Spain's Poor People’s Treasure (of medicine) for instance. ‘If you place buckthorn in the house all demons will flee'.[1207] Archaeology may help, where it can provenance apotropaic objects. It can lend support to the notion that ‘the measures taken to cope with the unseen menace of demons constituted a domestic activity as familiar as cooking, working, playing games or bringing up children'.n A palatial house in late antique Butrint, Albania, across the straits from Corfu, has for instance revealed mosaics full of apotropaic designs and yielded finds such as a small copper amulet with an image of Solomon, master of demons, slaying the female monster Gyllou (among other names) who visited parturient women and sought to strangle their new bornd2People learn to live with demons, to incorporate them into their lives at various points on the spectrum between the literal and the symbolic. Historians of healing need to do the same. This collection of studies will help them find the way.
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