Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

Aristotle On Sterility 269wide-ranging account of sterility in Generation of Animals (746 b 16ff.),where we do find a discussion of weakness of the male seed and of variousmeans of ascertaining this.What Balme seems to mean when he denies the ‘iatric’ nature of the workis that it is not written by a practising doctor and that it is not intended fora medical readership, for example midwives or doctors. However, Balmeseems to make this claim on the basis of the alleged absence of what he calls‘the typical Hippocratic discussion of diseases and remedies’. As Föllingerhas pointed out, this concept of Hippocratic medicine is too simplistic. 42There is no such thing as ‘typical Hippocratic’ medicine or ‘Hippocraticdoctrine’. The Hippocratic Corpus is the work of a great variety of authorsfrom different periods and possibly different medical schools; as aconsequence, the collection displays a great variety of doctrines, styles andmethods. There are several works in the Hippocratic Corpus which certainlyintend a wider readership than just doctors and which explore in greatdetail the ‘normal’, ‘natural’ state of affairs (e.g. the embryological Nature ofthe Child ); and in the case of some works in the collection (e.g. On the Artof Medicine, On Breaths) it has even been questioned whether they werereally written by a doctor with practical experience. This indicates that thedistance between the Hippocratic writers and Aristotle was not so great andthat we must assume a whole spectrum of varying degrees of ‘specialism’or ‘expertise’: we need not assume that Aristotle was a practising doctorhimself in order to allow for a vivid interest, on his part, in medical details,nor need we assume that in ‘Hist. an. 10’ he was addressing an audienceof doctors or midwives (although this is an interesting possibility). In thisrespect, the fact that ‘Hist. an. 10’ does not go into therapeutic details (seeabove) may be significant; it simply says that a condition is ‘in need oftreatment’, but it does not say what the proper treatment consists of. 43 Butit is clear from the treatise that the author has been listening carefully towhat such medical experts had to say. 44Nor is there any reason, from this point of view, to be worried aboutresemblances to the Hippocratic writings. As recent research has shown,Aristotle’s awareness of Hippocratic views seems to have been much greaterthan used to be assumed, 45 and several Hippocratic works were at least42 Föllinger (1996) 147–8.43 The only statement to this effect is in 635 b 28, where the treatment the uterus is said to require iscompared with the mouth’s need to spit sc. .44 Indeed he is critical of ‘many doctors’ (638 b 15) who misidentified cases of dropsy as cases of molauteri.45 See, e.g., Oser-Grote (1997) 333–49, and her forthcoming book Aristoteles und das Corpus Hippocraticum.See also the literature quoted in ch. 6 above.