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In this article, we analyse the epicurean vision on sensoperception and dreams. This epicurean vision is known to us, specially, from the wrintings of his roman divulger, Titus Lucretius Caro in his work "On the nature of things" ("De rerum natura"), IV Chant. The epicureans adopted the materialistic conception of nature, based upon Democritus of Abdera atomistic theory and, in this way, they distinguished their theories on dreams from the general principles prevailing in the popular greco-roman litterature, as well as from the divinatory perception of oneirocritics like Artemidorus and also from the first steps of the physiological conception of dreams from philosophers as the presocratics and Aristotle. We end this article with some of the more interesting paragraphs from Chant IV of the work by Lucretius, regarding this subjet.

In this article, the author analyzes the concept of dreams in ancient Mesopotamia, as well as the interpretation of their therapeutic function by this civilisation. Also discussed are sleep disorders, as described on cuneiform tablets, written on clay at least four thousand years ago. These tablets had a magic role but also functioned as medical texts, detailing therapies used in dealing with the problems of sleep.