The Bizarre Death of Heraclitus
In short, Heraclitus was a misanthrope, and his misanthropy led him to avoid contact with other people for long stretches. In those periods, he wandered alone through mountains and wilderness, surviving on plants and what he could scavenge. As Diogenes put it: “finally, [Heraclitus] became a hater of his kind, and roamed the mountains, surviving on grass and herbs“. He came to a bizarre end because of an affliction with dropsy, or edema – a painful accumulation of fluids beneath the skin and in the body’s cavities.
Doctors could offer neither cure nor relief, so Heraclitus, the self-taught philosopher, sought to apply his self-teaching skills to medicine and heal himself. He tried an innovative cure in which he covered himself in cow dung. The theory was that the warmth of the manure would dry and draw out of him the “noxious damp humor”, or the fluids accumulated beneath his skin. Heraclitus covered himself in cow poo, then lay out in the sun to dry. He was immobilized by the cow dung that dried around him into a body cast. He was thus unable to shoo off a pack of dogs that came upon and ate him alive.
