Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

114 Hippocratic Corpus and Diocles of Carystusat restoring the health of a sick body, 43 but rather at bringing about theleast harmful, or least painful, state for a sick body, which may amountto combating symptoms such as pain 44 or, more generally, to making thedisease more tolerable.If Celsus is correct in portraying dietetics as a relatively late developmentin Greek therapeutics, 45 this must refer to dietetic medicine, the applicationof dietetic principles to the treatment of diseases. Rather than thinkingthat dietetics was originally a part of medicine and was only later, underthe influence of changing social and cultural circumstances, 46 divided intoa therapeutic part (the treatment of diseases) and a hygienic part (thepreservation of health and hygiene), one may also defend the view thatdietetics as a way of looking after the body was of an older origin andhad, by the fifth century bce, developed into an established corpus ofknowledge primarily based on experience which was subsequently appliedto the treatment of diseases. 473 the aims of therapeutic activityWith these considerations we are at the heart of what may be called, with theusual caveats and reservations about the diversity the Hippocratic writingsdisplay, ‘Hippocratic medicine’. For the ambivalence just noted – preservationof health, or treatment of disease, or providing palliative care – is, ina way, characteristic of Hippocratic approaches to health and disease as awhole. Here the need for terminological clarification makes itself particularlyfelt, for neither the Greek nor its English derivative ‘therapy’is specific with regard to this question about the aim(s) to be achieved. Thisbrings us to a consideration of the terms in which the doctor’s activities arereferred to in the Hippocratic Corpus.As Nadia van Brock has shown, 48 among the various words used to signifythe doctor’s activity – such as (‘cure’), (‘treat’), (‘care’), (‘help, benefit’), (‘remedy, assist’), (‘care’), (‘treat’), (‘protect’) – perhaps (‘set free, release’), (‘make healthy’), and the passive 43 See On Regimen in Acute Diseases 41 (2.310 L.) and 44 (2.316–18 L.).44 E.g. On Diseases 3.16 (7.150 L.): ‘This also stops the pains’ ( ).45 For other evidence to suggest that this was the case, see Longrigg (1999).46 On this see Edelstein (1967a) 303–16.47 See On Ancient Medicine 7 (1.586 L.): ‘How do these two [i.e. development of a regimen in healthand the use of regimen as treatment of disease] differ, except in that the latter has more differentkinds and is more varied and requires more effort? But the former is the starting-point, and camebefore the latter ( ).’48 N. van Brock (1961).