Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

194 Aristotle and his schoolIt is further the task of the student of nature to study the first principles of healthand disease; for neither health nor disease can occur with that which is deprivedof life. For this reason one can say that most of those people who study nature endwith a discussion of medicine, just as those doctors who practise their disciplinein a more inquisitive way (philosophōterōs) start dealing with medicine on the basisof principles derived from the study of nature. (Sens. 436 a 17–b 2)Concerning life and death and the subjects kindred to this inquiry our discussionis practically complete. As for health and disease, it is the business not only ofthe doctor but also of the student of nature to discuss their causes up to a certainpoint. However, in what sense they are different and study different things, shouldnot be ignored, since the facts prove that their discussions are to a certain extentcontiguous: those doctors who are ingenious and inquisitive do have something tosay about nature and think it important to derive the principles of their disciplinefrom the study of nature; and concerning those students of nature who are mostdistinguished, one may well say that they end with the principles of medicine.(Resp. 480 b 22–31)In these passages Aristotle says that it belongs to the task of the studentof nature (phusikos) to deal also with health and disease, because healthand disease are characteristics of living beings. 41 However, this interest islimited to a discussion of the principles or the causes of health and disease. 42Those who do so are called the ‘most distinguished students of nature’; thesame word charieis is used here as in the passage from On Divination inSleep, where it is said of doctors. He further remarks that there are doctorswho base their medical practice on the principles of the study of nature ingeneral: these are called the doctors who ‘practise their discipline in a moreinquisitive way (philosophōterōs)’ and who are ‘ingenious and inquisitive’.This is reasonable, he says, because natural science and medicine, thoughbeing different and studying different things, are ‘contiguous’ (sunoroi): upto a certain point their procedures run parallel or even overlap.In a passage from the Nicomachean Ethics we find the same expression asin On Divination in Sleep:clearly it is the task of the student of politics to have some acquaintance with thestudy of the soul, just as the doctor who is to heal the eye should also know aboutthe body as a whole, and all the more since politics is a higher and more honourableart than medicine; and among doctors those who are distinguished devote much41 I.e. animals and plants. The scope of the Parva naturalia is the ‘affections’ experienced by beings thatpossess soul, e.g. life and death, youth and old age, respiration, sense-perception, sleep, dreaming,memory, recollection. See the preface to On Sense Perception and the discussion in van der Eijk (1994)68–72.42 Similar remarks about the limited interest of medicine for the student of nature are to be found inLong. et brev. vitae 464 b 32ff. and Part. an. 653 a 8ff.