Diagnosis, divination and disease: towards an understanding of the rationale behind the Babylonian Diagnostic Handbook.

By analysing the structure and logic of the Diagnostic Handbook, the Babylonian understanding of medical diagnosis is investigated. Through a comparison of the systematic patterns of divinatory and diagnostic interpretation, it is demonstrated that the logic of medical diagnosis differs substantially from that of divination. While it is argued that this cannot be taken as hard evidence for the empirical character of Babylonian diagnosis, other elements within the Diagnostic Handbook, which can be considered to be 'rational' from a modern point of view, will be discussed in order to assess whether Babylonian diagnosis may indeed be called 'scientific'.