Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

100 Hippocratic Corpus and Diocles of Carystusfor having pointed out that experience is an indispensable (but not necessarilythe only) instrument for ascertaining the ultimate effects of food anddrink. This reference to the ‘ultimate effects’ 58 is in accordance with the interpretationof section 8 given above: this ultimate effect does not admit offurther causal explanation; we can only make sure what it is by experience,by applying the foodstuff in a given case and seeing how it works out.PostscriptDiscussions of this fragment that came out after the original publication ofthis paper can be found in Hankinson (1998a), (1999) and (2002), in vander Eijk (2001a) 321–34, and in Frede (forthcoming).58 [In the original version of this paper I suggested that the Greek original may have been somethinglike , which could be related to what Diocles in fr. 176,21 says on ‘the wholenature’ ( ) of a foodstuff or drink: this ‘whole nature’, rather than the individualconstituents of a foodstuff, should be held responsible for the effects it produces; and this can onlybe ascertained by experientially seeing how it works in practice. But a re-examination of the Arabicwould seem to make this interpretation less plausible. A literal translation of the Arabic wouldread as follows: ‘It is not possible to ascertain in the case of food and drink where their last things(akhiriyatuha?) return to/develop into (ta’ûlu) but by way of experience.’ On this reading, it is theultimate effects of foodstuffs which are meant, and this suggests that the Greek may have containeda word such as or , or perhaps (cf. Diocles, fr. 184,32). The ideais then that although a Dogmatist might speculate theoretically about the power () ofaparticular foodstuff, e.g. on the basis of its known constituents or on the basis of comparison oranalogy with the known effects of other, similar foodstuffs, one can only ascertain the effects ofany particular foodstuff by seeing experientially how it works out in practice. Thus the positionattributed to Diocles here corresponds closely with that attributed to him by Galen in fr. 176; and itis plausible to assume that the fragment from Diocles’ Matters of Health quoted in fr. 176 is also atleast part of the basis of Galen’s report on Diocles’ position here. (I am indebted to Peter Pormann forhis help here.) A different interpretation was proposed by Walzer, who translated the present phrase‘there is no way of ascertaining the ultimate disposal of foods and drinks except by experience’. Thiswould suggest that Galen is referring to how foods and drinks are ultimately disposed of; but thiswould seem to be quite inappropriate to the context.]