Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

158 Aristotle and his schoolto a large extent determine it (the so-called ‘character-affecting aspect’, toēthopoion, of human physiology, 953 a 35; cf. Pigeaud (1988a) 25ff.). Secondly,it explains that wine, depending on the quantity consumed, has theability to provoke very different (pantodapous, 953 a 38) and even contrastingstates of mind. In 953 b 17 this analogy is applied to the problem ofmelancholy: both wine and the melancholic nature ‘affect character’, yetthe difference is that wine does so only occasionally and for a brief period oftime, whereas the melancholic nature does so permanently and persistently(aei). For some people are aggressive, taciturn or sentimental by nature –they are in a state of mind that affects other people only occasionally andfor a brief period of time, under the influence of wine. Yet in both casesthe cause of this ēthopoion remains the same: it is the heat that controls 67the body and causes the development of breath (pneuma) (the connectionbetween heat and breath is made again in 955 a 35). 68 In the ensuing passagethe breath-containing properties of wine and black bile, as well as aphrodisiacs,are discussed. In 954 a 11, the author returns to the notion of themelancholic nature: his remark that black bile is a mixture of heat and cold(954 a 13) ties in with line 953 b 22, but it also allows him to continue histrain of thought, as this mixture is said to allow for variation: although blackbile is cold by nature (954 a 21;cf.Somn. vig. 457 a 31), it can be heated andinvoke various states of mind, depending on the mixture of heat and cold(954 a 28–30: ’ this way, thesecond objective of the analogy with wine is met. 69 Those in whom coldpredominates are numb and obtuse, yet those in whom heat predominatesget beside themselves (manikoi), 70 or they become astute, horny or prone67 Flashar’s translation ‘all dies nämlich wird durch die Veränderung des Wärmehaushaltes bewirkt’does not do justice to the use of (cf. 954 a 14; 955 a 32–3).68 As to the role of pneuma, cf. Klibansky et al. (1964) 30: ‘In this “pneuma” there dwells a singularlystimulating driving-force which sets the whole organism in a state of tension (orexis), strongly affectsthe mind and tries, above all in sexual intercourse, literally “to vent itself”; hence both the aphrodisiaceffect of wine and the lack of sexual restraint, proper, in the author’s view, to the man of melancholictemperament.’ On pneuma as physiological principle of movement cf. Somn. vig. 456 a 7ff.69 This paragraph also gives further information on the physiology of the melancholic: the typicalfeature of the melancholic is apparently not the mixture of heat and cold within the black bile (asmight be concluded from 954 a 13), for this balance may vary. Rather, the typical feature is that hehas an excess of black bile by nature, as 954 a 22–3 shows.70 Flashar states that the word manikos cannot be right here, as it is indicated in line 36 ‘as a furtherincrease’ of the heat and as it does not fit well with the other predicates. Against the latter ithas to be said that the combination of manikos and euphuēs (curiously translated ‘gutmütig’ byFlashar) is known from Poet. 1455 a 32 and Rh. 1390 b 28. As to the former difficulty, it should benoted that 35–6 does not speak about ‘a further increase’ at all: in fact it deals again with those