Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

124 Hippocratic Corpus and Diocles of Carystusthroughout classical antiquity (and remained so until the nineteenth century),and to which no definitive answer was found. In so far as antiquityis concerned, there were at least three causes for this: the reasons for askingthe question (and the desire to answer it) differed depending on whetherone’s purposes were medical, philosophical or purely rhetorical; the statusof the arguments for or against a certain answer (such as the evidential valueof medical experiments) was subject to fluctuation; and the question itselfposed numerous other problems related to the (to this day) disputed area ofphilosophical psychology or ‘philosophy of the mind’, such as the questionof the relationship between body and soul, or of the difference between thevarious ‘psychic’ faculties, and so on. When following the debate from its inceptionuntil late antiquity, one gets the impression that the differencesmanifest themselves precisely in these three areas. Whereas the doctorsof the Hippocratic Corpus were mainly interested in the question of thelocation of the mind in so far as they felt a need for a treatment of psychologicaldisorders based on a theory of nature, later the situation changedand medical-physiological data were no more than one of the possible (butby no means decisive) factors to build arguments for one of the positionstaken on.In the section below I will pay particular attention to the early phase of thedebate (fifth and fourth centuries bce), concentrating on the main authorsof the Hippocratic Corpus, Aristotle and Diocles, with brief references toPlato.2 greek doctors and philosophers of thefifth and fourth centuries bceIt can be inferred from remarks made by Plato, Aristotle and in theHippocratic Corpus 12 that as early as the fifth century bce doctors and naturalphilosophers disagreed on the question which bodily factors (organs,tissues or substances) played the most important part in performing facultieswe would call ‘psychic’ or ‘mental’. These include thinking, perception,feeling, remembering, and so on. Secondary literature on this issue usuallydistinguishes between the encephalocentric, cardiocentric and haematocentricview on the seat of the mind. 13 The encephalocentric view was allegedly12 Plato, Phaedo 96 b; Aristotle, Metaph. 1013 a 4ff. and 1035 b 25ff.; [Hippocrates], On the SacredDisease 17 (6.392 L.).13 See, among others, Manuli and Vegetti (1977). A selection from the extensive range of literatureon this subject: Bidez and Leboucq (1944); Byl (1968); Di Benedetto (1986) 35–69; Duminil (1983);Gundert (2000); Hankinson (1991b); Harris (1973); Manuli (1977); Pigeaud (1981b) 72; Pigeaud(1980); Pigeaud (1987); Revesz (1917); Rüsche (1930); B. Simon (1978); P. N. Singer (1992).