Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

110 Hippocratic Corpus and Diocles of CarystusIt is hazardous, with so little information of such questionable reliability,to draw any firm conclusions, but there is some plausibility in the hypothesisthat Diocles’ On Treatments was a more specialised work, which paidmore attention to therapeutic detail (apparently arranged by disease) butless to causal explanation or symptomatology, whereas his briefer pathologicalwork Affection, Cause, Treatment dealt with the therapy of diseases ina wider, more general framework. Further titles and fragments of Diocles’works indicate that he wrote separate works on regimen in health, anatomy,physiology (digestion), external remedies, toxicology, prognostics, gynaecology,fevers, catarrhs, evacuations, bandages, surgery, vegetables, rootcutting,and possibly cookery and sexuality. 19 Although there may have beena substantial overlap in subject matter between some of these works, thesetitles suggest that by the time of Diocles medicine had increasingly becomecompartmentalised, and this well accords with Celsus’ reference to Diocles‘proceeding into diverse ways of treatment’. 20As far as point (iii) in Celsus’ text about the tripartition of medicine isconcerned, some interpreters seem to take the words ‘in the same times’(isdemque temporibus) as referring to the times of Diocles, Praxagoras andChrysippus, Herophilus and Erasistratus, and this would mean that thedivision of medicine is presented as a post-Hippocratic development. 21aquatum pueris uel his, qui ex uulnere in passionem ceciderunt. prohibet etiam cibum dari et iubet ea,quae passione tenduntur, uaporari et emolliri. item tertio libro de curationibus similiter clystere utituret uinum dulce dat bibendum adhibens uaporationes nunc siccas, nunc humectas, et ungit cerotario atquelanis patientia contegit loca; Diocles, fr. 100 vdE).19 See the list of preserved titles in van der Eijk (2000a) xxxiii–xxxiv. Apart from the titles mentioned,there is also a work by Diocles entitled Archidamos (fr. 185), which dealt, among other things, withthe use of olive oil for hygienic purposes. Wellmann’s assumption of a work by Diocles (fr. 20 W.) is based on the (highly doubtful) presupposition that the anonymous sourceto which (Ps.-)Vindicianus refers by means of formulae such as inquit, ait, is Diocles; a refutation ofthis view has been offered by Debru (1992); see also Debru (1996) 311–27 and van der Eijk (2001a)79–91.20 I prefer to interpret this phrase as referring to variety within the healing practices of individualphysicians rather than as suggesting that each physician developed his own peculiar method(s) oftreatment as distinct from those of the others (von Staden (1999b) 268) or as referring to the divisionswithin the Dogmatist tradition between Erasistrateans, Herophileans, etc. (Smith (1989) 76: ‘alludes,apparently, to the divisions between Erasistrateans and Herophileans, and perhaps to other dogmaticsects’; the latter seems unlikely as the difference is said to lie in methods of treatment rather thanin theoretical justification for this). But many commentators have expressed uncertainty about theprecise meaning of this phrase; cf. Smith (1989, 76): ‘I am uncertain what differences Celsus mayhave had in mind’ and Serbat (1995, xxxix: ‘observation assez énigmatique’), and the translations bySpencer: ‘so practiced this art that they made advances even towards various methods of treatment’;Serbat: ‘pratiquèrent cet art en le faisant même progresser dans des voies thérapeutiques différentes’;and Mudry (1982, 67): ‘pratiquèrent cet art de telle sorte qu’ils avancèrent encore dans des voiesdifférentes’).21 Mudry (1982) 67; von Staden (1989) 99; Serbat (1995, xxxix) takes it as a reference to the times ofHerophilus and Erasistratus.