Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

Aristotle On Sterility 263the theoretical ‘study of nature’ and the practical 15 artof ‘medicine’ . This becomes clear from three well-known passagesin the Parva naturalia, 16 where Aristotle not only speaks approvinglyof doctors who build their medical doctrines on ‘starting-points’ derived from the study of nature, but also of ‘the most refined students ofnature’ , who dealwith the principles of health and disease; the latter is what Aristotle himselfapparently did, or intended to do, in his work On Health and Disease , which is not extant. 17 To be sure, in the third of thesepassages (On Respiration (Resp.) 480 b 22ff.) Aristotle stresses that althoughmedicine and the study of nature are, up to a point, coterminous, theyare different in method as well as in subject matter; hence, scholars haveconcluded that any discussion of medical topics by Aristotle was (or wouldhave been) fundamentally different from works such as those contained inthe Hippocratic Corpus. 18 However, this conclusion seems to ignore thefact that Aristotle’s remarks here in the Parva naturalia apply to his projectof ‘the study of nature’ (to which also On Health and Disease would have belonged),and it fails to take account of the possibility that Aristotle, withinanother, more specialised and technical framework, may have gone into fargreater medical detail.That such an ‘other framework’ actually existed is suggested by the references,both in Aristotle’s own works and in the indirect tradition, to morespecialised medical studies. Thus Aristotle himself refers on numerous occasionsto a work called . 19 In his catalogue of Aristotle’s writings(5.25), Diogenes Laertius lists a work called in two books, a titlethat suggests that this was possibly a collection of medical problems not dissimilarto the first book of the extant – but presumably post-Aristotelian –Problemata. 20 Interestingly, the same catalogue also lists a work 15 Strictly speaking, medicine is a ‘productive’ art for Aristotle, since its purpose, health, is distinctfrom its activity (cf. Eth. Nic. 1140 a 1–23; Pol. 1254 a 2; Mag. mor. 1197 a 3); but this distinction isirrelevant for the contrast ‘theoretical’ vs. ‘practical’.16 Sens. 436 a 17–b 2; Div. somn. 463 a 4–5; Resp. 480 b 22–31. See also Long. et brev. vitae 464 b 32ff.;Part. an. 653 a 8ff. For a discussion of these passages see ch. 6 above, pp. 192–5.17 On this work, and its reputation in the later tradition, see Strohmaier (1983) 186–9.18 E.g. Flashar (1962) 318: ‘Aristoteles sagt von sich selbst, er sei kein Fachmann in der Medizin und betrachtemedizinische Fragen nur unter philosophischem oder naturwissenschaftlichem Blickpunkt.’For a more positive attitude to the possibility that Aristotle wrote on medicine see Marenghi (1961)141–61.19 The references can easily be found with the aid of Bonitz’s Index Aristotelicus or Gigon’s collectionof fragments (see n. 3 above), frs. 295–324. For a recent discussion of this (lost) work see Kollesch(1997) 370; see also Kullmann (1998) 130–1.20 The Aristotelian authorship of this section of the Problemata was defended by Marenghi (1966), andlater by Louis (1991–4) vol. i. Flashar (1962) 385, is more cautious. [See ch. 5 n. 168.]