Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

To help, or to do no harm 115 (‘get healthy’) and (‘be released from’) are theonly terms that really indicate a full restoration of health; 49 and of the varioustranslations available for these words (e.g. ‘therapy’, ‘treatment’, ‘cure’,‘care’, ‘attention’, etc.), ‘healing’ is very often not the appropriate rendering.Accordingly, recommendations of particular modes of treatment are oftenexpressed in terms such as (‘it is profitable’), (‘itis suitable’), (‘it is appropriate’) and (‘it is fitting’).As such, these terms and expressions provide a good illustration of theway in which the principle ‘to help, or to do no harm’ is interpreted in practice.We can see this principle at work particularly in the actual treatmentadvocated by the authors of the nosological works (On Diseases 1, 2, 3, OnInternal Affections). In these works symptomatology, causal explanation andtherapy of diseases are fairly consistently adopted as distinctive categories –and as such they resemble the apparently even more systematic discussionof diseases and their treatment as offered by Diocles in the work Affection,Cause, Treatment mentioned above. Reading through the therapeuticsections of these works, three points are particularly striking. The first isthat on several occasions in On Internal Affections and On Diseases 2 and3 a course of treatment is recommended in the full awareness of the lethalnature of the disease. 50 One of the reasons for doctors such as the authorof On Internal Affections to adopt this attitude is clearly that they realisethat it is very difficult to establish whether a particular case is hopeless ornot, indeed that a certain mode of treatment may, by provoking a certainphysical reaction, provide clarification on this, 51 or alternatively that bypostponing treatment for too long, the disease may further exacerbate andbecome definitely incurable (though not necessarily fatal). 52 On the otherhand, there are cases in which the doctor is advised to wait and see howthe disease develops before deciding whether to treat it or not, 53 or to inferfrom certain symptoms whether the disease is curable or not. 54 Yet there arealso several cases where the patient’s chances of survival are considered to benegligibly small, but where treatment is nevertheless recommended. 55 Thepurpose of treatment in such cases is not always stated, but it may be, as49 An interesting collocation of the terms and is found inInt. Aff. 26 (7.234 L.).50 On degrees of ‘mortality’ see von Staden (1990) 79–80. The idea that Hippocratic doctors did notengage, or were reluctant to engage, in treatment of hopeless cases – though not without sometextual support, e.g. On the Art of Medicine 8, On Diseases 2.48 – has been shown to be untenablein its generalising claims by Wittern (1979) and von Staden (1990). For a more recent discussion ofthis issue see also Prioreschi (1992).51 Int. Aff. 27 (7.238 L.); 41 (7.270 L.). 52 Int. Aff. 26 (7. 236 L.); 47 (7. 284 L.).53 E.g. On Diseases 3.2 (7.120 L.). 54 Int. Aff. 22 (7.220 L.).55 E.g. On Diseases 2.57 (7.88–90 L.); 3.1 (7.118 L.); 3.5 (7.122 L.); 3.6 (7.124 L.); 3.10 (7.130 L.); 3.11(7.132 L.); 3.14 (7.134–6 L.); Int. Aff. 6 (7.182 L.); 29 (7.244 L.).