Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

Galen on qualified experience 283whether all olive oil is irritating to the eyes should be decided on the basisof experience rather than by improvisation. 11 Here, as elsewhere, he usesthe expression (or ) , which obviously meansthat a statement or belief about the nature, characteristics or power of asubstance has to be checked against, or qualified and sophisticated by meansof the results of empirical research. Here is the instrument by whichsuch a qualification is achieved; as its co-occurrences with words such as and (‘test’) in these contexts indicate, 12 it is hereadopted as a critical, testing instrument rather than as a heuristic deviceaiming at discovering new data.However, we also find the expression that some issues can, or have tobe settled – discovered, found out, investigated, tested – on the strengthof the , experience which has itself been the object ofqualification, 13 and statements to the effect that , ‘experience’, should11 ‘The solutions to all such difficulties are very problematic if one raises them as physical problems,but if one considers them in relation to the practical execution of the art, all they require is muchexperience, and [only] some reasonings that are accurate and qualified, though not many. For,to begin with, as to the question whether olive oil is irritating to the eyes or not, it is better todetermine this by means of experience, rather than to try it either way, just as rhetoricians do by wayof exercise’ ( ). See also De dign. puls. 1.7 (8.803K.); De comp. med. per gen. 2.5 (13.502 K.); Commentary on Hippocrates’ Regimen in Acute Diseases(In Hippocratis De victu acutorum commentarium, In Hipp. Acut. comment). 1.15 (CMG v 9, 1,p. 129.33–130.3 Helmreich, 15.444 K.).12 Cf. De comp. med. per gen. 2.5 (13.502 K.); De comp. med. sec. loc. 5.5 (12.884 K.); De temper. 3.5(p. 113.20ff. Helmreich; 1.691 K.); De simpl. med. fac. 1.40 (11.456 K.); 4.7 (11.642 K.).13 See the instances listed in n. 9 above. Although with in the sense of ‘distinguish’, ‘discriminate’,when used in the aorist and the perfect, Greek authors seem to prefer middle rather thanactive verb forms (see LSJ s.v., who quote Demosthenes 24.192: [and Arist.Part. an. 644 b 2–3]), it is obvious that the participle should be interpreted as passive:‘experience that has been discriminated/qualified’, i.e. has undergone discrimination or qualification[cf. Arist. Eth. Nic. 1138 b 33], not ‘experience that has performed discrimination’ (which wouldcome very close to the use of as an instrument of qualification discussed in the previoussentence). This distinction is confused in Beintker and Kahlenberg’s translation (1948) of the termin De alim. facult. 1.1.45 (CMG v4, 2,p.216.4–6 Helmreich, 6.479 K.): they translate ’ as ‘Eine sichere Kenntnis derselben erwirbt man sich nur mit Mühe und inlanger Zeit, und zwar auf Grund einer durch scharfe Unterscheidung gewonnenen Erfahrung, derBeschaffenheit der Ausdünstungen und der Säfte’ (which suggests that is notan instrument of research but rather the attitude or the state that results from empirical research,the experience or expertise () constituted by the cumulative body of empirical knowledgeone has built up during a process of trial and error and further refining); however, at 1.1.46 (CMGv4, 2, p.216.16 Helmreich, 6.479 K.) they translate as ‘wennman es nicht mit einer genau unterscheidenden Erfahrung beurteilt’ (the Latin translation printedby Kühn has ‘ex certa definitaque experientia’ and ‘si experientia definita ipsa exploraris’). Nor is