Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

Heart, brain, blood, pneuma 123natural philosophy, such as the so-called four primary qualities hot, cold,dry and wet. By contrast, he adopted a predominantly empirical approachto medicine, which in his view was tantamount to dietetics, the theoryof healthy living. His approach was based on insights into the wholesomeeffects of food, insights that had been passed down from generation togeneration and refined by experimentation. He even went so far as to claimthat in reality physics does not form the basis for medicine, but medicinefor physics.The question of to what extent a doctor should be concerned with, oreven build on, principles derived from physics (or metaphysics) remained amatter of dispute throughout antiquity. What made the problem even moreurgent was that in many areas of controversy, such as that on the locationof the mind, it remained unclear to what extent these could be resolved onempirical grounds. The doctor’s desire to build views concerning the correctdiagnosis and treatment of psychosomatic disorders such as mania, epilepsy,lethargy, melancholia and phrenitis on a presupposition about the locationof the psychic faculties affected, which could not be proved empirically,differed according to his willingness to accept such principles, which weresometimes complimentarily, sometimes condescendingly labelled ‘philosophical’.10 This group of doctors with a profoundly philosophical interestincluded, for instance, Diocles of Carystus (fourth century bce) and theauthor of the Hippocratic work On the Sacred Disease (end fifth centurybce). They corresponded to an ideal proclaimed first by Aristotle and laterby Galen, namely that of the ‘civilised’ or ‘distinguished’ physician, who isboth a competent doctor and a philosopher skilled in physics, logic, andrhetoric. 11 Caelius Aurelianus’ derogatory remark shows that this ideal wasby no means beyond dispute. Yet in this dispute, too, the variety of viewson the matter was much wider than his general characterisation suggests.It is therefore highly likely that Caelius Aurelianus’ presentation intends toexaggerate the differences in opinion between the doctors mentioned, inorder to make his own view stand out more clearly and simply against thebackground of confusion generated by others.These introductory observations may suffice to provide an outline of thedebate on the seat of the mind, which was the subject of fierce dispute10 The first time the word philosophia is attested in Greek literature is in ch. 20 of the Hippocraticwriting On Ancient Medicine (1.620 L.). The word is used in a clearly negative sense, to describethe practice of scrounging from physics, which is rejected by the author. The name Empedocles ismentioned in this context.11 For this Aristotelian ideal see below, ch. 6, pp.193–7. Galen wrote a separate treatise entitled anddevoted to the proposition that The Best Physician is also a Philosopher (i.e. skilled in logic, physics,and ethics; see 1.53–63 K.).