Il cuore e le malattie cardiache nella medicina esorcistica vedica

Reconstructing anatomical terminology from Vedic texts is a daunting exercise. With few exceptions, there is little agreement over the vocabulary used in the Vedic corpus to define internal organs, tissues, vessels and body segments. The heart, and the cardiac region in general, seems less problematic from a philological point of view. This notwithstanding, the study of “heart diseases”, vaguely grouped under the nouns hṛdrogá and hṛddyotá, presents major problems of interpretation. In this article, I will discuss how myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, can be recognised in at least one hymn of the Atharvaveda, making of it one of the most ancient sources in relation to such cardiopathy. Moving from that, I propose a reconsideration of Vedic exorcism and interprets it as a nosological exercise defined by ritual logic and poetic grammar rather than a mere collection of symptoms without any apparent rationale.