Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

To help, or to do no harm 105medicine were incomplete and impotent. (10) After these, Serapion was the firstto claim that this theoretical discipline had no bearing on medicine at all and thatit [i.e. medicine] was a matter of practice and experience only. He was followed byApollonius, Glaucias, and some time later by Heraclides of Tarentum and severalother very distinguished men, who on the strength of the very claim they madegave themselves the name of Empiricists. (11) Thus that part of medicine whichheals by regimen was also divided into two parts, some claiming for themselvesthat it was a theoretical art, others that it was a matter of practice only. After thosewho have just been dealt with, however, no one indeed added anything to whathe had accepted from his precursors until Asclepiades made major changes to themethod of healing.Four brief comments on this passage are in order here:(i) The art of medicine as practised by Hippocrates is presented by Celsusin a rather narrow sense of the art of healing (curare), namely treatmentor therapy, which raises the question what place, if any, is left foranatomy, physiology, prognostics and pathology – areas which arewell represented in the Hippocratic Corpus.(ii) Progress in this art is said to have led to a differentiation of modesof treatment (in diuersas curandi uias) which occurred shortly afterHippocrates (8).(iii) It is said (9) that ‘in the same times’ a tripartition of medicine occurred.It is unclear, however, what Celsus means by ‘the same times’,and whether this tripartition is identical to, or a consequence of,the differentiation mentioned in the previous sentence, or in otherwords, how the sentences Post quem . . . processerint and isdemque temporibus. . . nominarunt are related to one another.(iv) The renewal of interest in the theoretical study of nature as well asthe subsequent criticism this provoked among the Empiricists (9–11)is said to have taken place within the specific area of dietetics, whichin its turn, and as a result of this development, was divided into twobranches.I shall be brief about point (i), for it may be, and often has been, arguedthat this perception of Hippocratic medicine reflects, to a much greaterextent than the other three points, Celsus’ personal view of the prioritiesin medicine. 8 Yet in at least one respect the surviving evidence does seemto agree with the picture he presents. The Hippocratic Corpus providesevidence of an increasingly self-conscious medical profession, which is reflectingon and promulgating its own principles, setting high standards8 On Celsus as a reporter of Rationalist medicine see von Staden (1994b); on Celsus’ view of Hippocratessee Serbat (1995) liii–lvii; Mudry (1977) 345–52; Castiglioni (1940) 862–6.