Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

88 Hippocratic Corpus and Diocles of Carystuslike to add a second caveat, which has to do with the nature of polemicalwriting in antiquity. Even if we can find a text A, the contents of whichcompletely correspond with the ideas criticised by the author of anothertext, say, B, and a text C which only shows some similarities with whatis criticised in B, the statement that B is consciously opposing A and notC can at best remain a plausible hypothesis. For we cannot rule out thepossibility that B is actually aiming at C in a way which is – according to ourstandards – just unfair: he may represent the ideas of his opponent in a verydistorted and caricaturist way by ignoring several important specificationsor relevant details, or by isolating separate items from their context. Sucha distortion need not be a manifestation of malevolence; it may also be aresult of the fact that the way in which the author of B views text C is ratherdifferent from our perception of it. Especially in the case of an author, suchas Diocles, whose writings have been lost, we should be very careful notto pretend that we can creep into his skin and perceive with his eyes theother text which is supposed to be criticised and which represents only avery small part of a literature that must have been of considerable size.These remarks may appear unduly sceptical or a tedious example ofstating the obvious. Yet the practice of ancient polemical writers in caseswhere they do mention their opponents by name and in which the writingsof these opponents are preserved as well (e.g. the polemics of Christianwriters such as Origen or Tertullian against the Gnostics), shows that fairpolemics were the exception rather than the rule. 33Fredrich’s identifications are, of course, an extreme example, and mostscholars dealing with this fragment have expressed themselves in much morecautious terms. Yet the substantial similarity between Diocles’ criticism ofthe first claim and the critical remarks of the author of the Hippocratictext On Regimen 2.39 is accepted, and it has been suggested that both OnRegimen 2.39 and Diocles are arguing against generalisations of a type thephysician Mnesitheus in fragment 22 Bertier (and perhaps also the writerof the Hippocratic text On Affections 55) provides evidence of – which isreinforced by the fact that Galen in the immediate context of this samefragment presents Diocles as disagreeing with Mnesitheus on a relatedsubject (although it is not certain that chronology admits of the possibilitythat Mnesitheus actually was the target in either, or both, of these cases). 3433 On Origen’s polemics against the Gnostics see, for instance, Norelli (1992) and Castagno (1992).34 Mnesitheus, fr. 22 Bertier (Athenaeus 3.121 d): ‘Salty and sweet flavours all have a relaxing effect onthe belly, while those that are acid and sharp release urine. Those that are bitter are rather diuretic,while some of them also have a relaxing effect on the belly. Those that are sour, excretions’( ‘ ’, ‘