Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

134 Hippocratic Corpus and Diocles of CarystusThis explanation shows a strong similarity to the one in On Breaths, yetwithout mentioning blood. The main argument is that epilepsy is viewedas tightness of the chest or suffocation generated by the obstruction ofthe airways: the ‘passage through which breath flows’ is unlikely to referto anything else but the windpipe. One air current, the air saturated byfood vapours, obstructs the other, respiration. Aristotle does not speakabout disorders in perception that are among the symptoms of epilepsy(and which apparently can be explained as analogous to the state of sleep,that is, as a result of the heat of the heart becoming chilled). Nor doeshe speak about other symptoms characteristic of epileptic fits. Yet he doesmake selective use of empirical data by stating that young children areparticularly prone to the disease (a widely known fact in antiquity) andthat the disease often manifests itself during sleep.Lastly, the views of Diocles and his contemporary Praxagoras should bediscussed. Both consider the heart to be the seat of the mind, but both alsoattribute an important role to the brain and to the mediation between thetwo by what they call ‘psychic pneuma’:Praxagoras says that it [i.e. epilepsy] occurs around the thick artery, when phlegmatichumours form within it; these form bubbles and obstruct the passage of thepsychic breath coming from the heart, and in this way this [the breath] causes thebody to be agitated and seized by spasms; when the bubbles die down, the affectionstops.Diocles himself, too, thinks that it is an obstruction occurring around thesame place, and that for the rest it happens in the same way as Praxagoras says itoccurs . . . 36Compared to On the Sacred Disease it is significant that Diocles and Praxagorasconsider the heart, not the brain, to be the starting-point for the psychicpneuma. In all other respects the explanations are virtually identical:the basic thought is that the passages through which the breath flows areobstructed or blocked; the obstruction is caused by phlegm (phlegma).Furthermore, Diocles and Praxagoras are the only doctors from the periodconcerned of whom we know some of the therapeutic measures they tookin case the disease occurred. The authors of On the Sacred Disease and OnBreaths restrict themselves to some very general remarks on curing the disease(by restoring the balance between the four primary qualities hot, cold,dry and wet; curing it by means of contrasting qualities). Diocles, on theother hand, is known to have based his treatment on the type of cause heestablished for the disease: purgative measures to remove phlegma, walking36 ‘Anonymus Parisinus’ 3 (published by I. Garofalo (1997)); tr. van der Eijk (2000a) 177.