Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

90 Hippocratic Corpus and Diocles of Carystusprimary and secondary qualities that is so important to the author of OnAncient Medicine; he rather distinguishes between qualities and powers, forit is the combination of these two that is supposed to be significant. Besides,there are more general reasons which should make us reluctant to associateDiocles with the author of On Ancient Medicine. The picture of Diocles thatemerges not just from this single fragment, but from the more than twohundred that are preserved from him, shows that in matters of physiologyand pathology Diocles’ opinions display many speculative characteristics inwhose company the author of On Ancient Medicine would have felt himselfquite uncomfortable. Diocles’ acceptance of the four primary qualities andof concepts such as innate pneuma and humours is frequently attested, andhis use of them in the causal explanation of diseases in his work Affection,Cause, Treatment (, , ) is well documented. 37 One mayobject that this information is based on testimonies (not on verbatim fragmentssuch as fragment 176) supplied by sources which are perhaps notvery reliable; but as far as this fragment is concerned, there is no reason fordoubt concerning the validity of these reports, for they are perfectly compatiblewith it. Fragment 176 does not present itself as (nor claims to be) amethodological programme for medical science as a whole: it is concernedwith dietetics, with the powers of foodstuffs and with the practical problemsthe physician has to face. It is far from self-evident that what Dioclessays here also applies to anatomy, pathology and general physiology – oreven if it would apply, what the implications of this would be. 38 Moreover,if the interpretation of the fragment given above is correct, we should saythat even within the field of dietetics Diocles is not hostile towards causalexplanations as such; he is just concerned with their limitations and withtheir correctness. He points out that there are many cases in which causal37 On Diocles’ physiology see frs. 25–8; on his pathology see, e.g., frs. 109 (on which see Smith (1979)186, and Flashar (1966) 50–3), 78, 95, 98, 117. A large number of Diocles’ aetiological views on diseasesare reported in the treatise on acute and chronic diseases by the so-called Anonymus Parisinus Fuchsii,edited by Garofalo (1997). It is remarkable that many of these aetiologies (e.g. frs. 72, 78, 98) arein the form of a definition stating the nature of the affection in question, while others describe theconditions under which (or the places where) the disease occurs (frs. 80, 87); moreover, fr. 98 seemsto imply that Diocles distinguished different kinds of causes. Although we should take into accountthe possibility that in many cases it is the Anonymus who is responsible for the precise wordingof the aetiologies, the testimonies nevertheless point to a sophisticated use of causal explanation byDiocles in dealing with diseases. The question of the reliability of the Anonymus (which is too oftenapproached from an a priori negative point of view, for instance by Kudlien (1963) 462) can only beanswered on the basis of an unbiased study of the whole text, which has only recently been madeavailable in its entirety by Garofalo (1997); see also van der Eijk (1999b).38 An extreme example of this is Kudlien’s view (1963, 461) that this fragment casts doubt on thereliability of doxographic reports that attribute to Diocles a doctrine of humours. On this seeFlashar (1966) 54 n. 5; Schöner (1964) 72ff.; Smith (1979) 185–6 n. 12.