Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

230 Aristotle and his school( ). 78 Whether they always are, or only in abnormalcases, or whether the influence in abnormal cases is of a different kind ratherthan of a different degree compared with normal cases is hard to decide, forthese bodily conditions are mostly referred to by Aristotle in the context of adiscussion of variations in intellectual performances (type (3) distinguishedabove, p. 217). It is clear, however, that apart from incidental bodily statessuch as drunkenness or sleep (which may be characterised as disturbingagents, although the former is , the latter ), thereare also more structural conditions such as the quality of the blood, age,the overall balance between warm and cold in the body and the quality ofthe skin. Variations in these structural conditions account for variations inintellectual capacities. The variations exist among different species, but alsoamong individual members of one species or types within a species, such asdwarfs or melancholics. For the most part, these types represent ‘imperfect’() or ‘deformed’ () groups of human beings with specialcharacteristics due to their physical aberrations. However, some types(such as the ) seem to represent special classes of humanswhose distinctive characteristics are not to be regarded as deformations, butas variations within one species that may be either conducive, or harmful,or just neutral to the exercise of certain psychic powers.We hear very little about what the bodily conditions of a normal, successfuloperation of the intellectual powers are, but, as I have already said, thereis good reason to assume that this is just because, in the writings that havesurvived, Aristotle simply does not have much reason to dwell on them.Our picture of Aristotle’s psycho-physiology is likely to remain very incomplete– as is also indicated by the difficulties involved in piecing together hisscattered remarks about physiological conditions such as pneuma, blood,and so forth. This has perhaps to do with his indebtedness to a medicaltradition which supplied a lot of material which he could simply take forgranted. As has already been demonstrated by Tracy – and is confirmed bymore recent work on Aristotle’s acquaintance with medical literature 79 –this indebtedness is probably much greater than the scanty references tomedical authorities in Aristotle’s works suggest. In this particular context,the Hippocratic work On Regimen comes to one’s mind, which in chapters35 and 36 has an extremely interesting discussion on variations in intellectualperformance due to variations in the proportion between fire and water in78 Other, more peripheral evidence (dealing less explicitly with intellectual capacities) is discussed inch. 5 above. See also Tracy (1969), passim.79 For further references to scholarly discussions of Aristotle’s relation to medical literature see ch. 9;see also Longrigg (1995) and Oser-Grote (1997).