Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

192 Aristotle and his schoolthe opposite from what one would expect if it were sent by a god, that is,among the poor, who are unable to please the gods by abundant sacrificeand who complain about this. 33 Again, the view expounded in both treatisesthat epilepsy and impotence are divine, but in the sense in which all diseasesare divine, namely in ‘having a nature’, is strikingly similar to Aristotle’sconcession here that dreams, though not divine in the traditional sense,are nevertheless ‘beyond human control’ because the nature that producesthem is daimonios.5 a medical endoxonIn producing examples for all this from the empirical domain, however,Aristotle manoeuvres himself into considerable difficulties, for he cites evidencethat, on closer inspection, falls short of fulfilling the strict requirementsfor dreams he had set out in On Dreams. In what follows, I willpresent two examples of this, which are case studies of his adoption andtransformation of a view borrowed from others, which is accommodatedin Aristotle’s theory (and explained in a different way from the contextfrom which he derived them) and backed up by empirical evidence. I willconclude by making some more general observations about the nature ofthese difficulties and possible explanations as to how they may have arisen.First, in his explanation of how dreams can be signs, Aristotle begins byreferring to the view attributed to ‘the more distinguished among medicalwriters’ that dreams deserve careful attention – a further indication thatAristotle was well aware of the medical views of this time: (Div. somn. 463 a 3–7)Are some dreams, then, causes and others signs, for example of things happeningin the region of the body? At any rate the distinguished among doctors, too, saythat close attention should be paid to dreams. And it is reasonable for those tothink so, too, who are no experts, but inquire the matter to a certain extent andhave a general interest.The wording of this passage sheds an interesting light on Aristotle’s viewon the relationship between medicine and the study of nature. The differencebetween the two groups referred to here (the technitai and thephilosophountes) signifies a distinction between a specialised, practical as33 For a full discussion of the argument here see van der Eijk (1991) and (1994) 294–5. See also Hankinson(1998c), who makes the same point.