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Travel Sickness 191
images). 47 This ‘easiest way’ is ‘with bowels emptied . . . in
summer, with a soft band six or seven fingers wide and not
more than five yards long wrapping up the loins as far as the
flanks’. So now we know how to dress, or at least what underwear
to don (to prevent chafing?). We are told about the use of a
stick. We learn about what to drink, how to avoid being dried
out by the sun, and so forth. As for sea voyages, the great thing
is not to resist being sick—an empty stomach again being an
advantage—and to counteract the stench of the bilge water. 48
These are not Oribasius’ own prescriptions. He takes them
from writers of the fourth century bc who survive, for us, only
in fragments (such as these extracts). They are among the
numerous casualties of the Galenic near monopoly of subsequent
medical learning and copying. Presumably Oribasius
turned to these two writers because they were distinctive: because
there was nothing like them in his principal source,
Galen. The regimen for travellers comes from the works of
Diocles of Carystus (fragment 184 van der Eijk), known to the
Athenians of his time as ‘the younger Hippocrates’. 49 The
regimen for seafarers is from his rough contemporary Dieuches
(fragment 19). 50 The latter, to judge by what remains of his
writing, dealt mainly with food and drink, and also with the use
of seawater as a purgative (fragment 18). 51
Diocles reportedly wrote twenty or so books on a great variety
of medical topics. Given his concern for the welfare of travellers,
it is ironic that one of the most substantial fragments of his
to come down to us (fragment 182) is a detailed daily regimen,
from the moment of waking onwards, for the man who has no
need to do anything more than sleep, eat, groom himself, walk,
and visit the gymnasium. Beyond that, he does not go anywhere.
Duties (if any there be) seem to occupy only a tiny
47
P. J. van der Eijk, Diocles of Carystus, A Collection of the Fragments and
Translation with Commentary: Text and Translation 1 (Leiden, 2000), no. 184,
p. 323.
48
Dieuches, ed. Raeder, CMG 6.3, 167–8.
49
For context, apart from van der Eijk’s admirable edition, see Wöhrle,
Studien zur Theorie, ch. V.3.
50
In Mnésithé et Dieuchès, ed. J. Bertier (Leiden, 1972).
51
From Oribasius, Medical Collections 8.42, ed. Raeder, CMG 6.1.1 (Leipzig
and Berlin, 1928), 292–3.