Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

284 Late antiquitybe executed with due consideration of, or at least not without, certain – ‘qualifications’, ‘distinctions’, or ‘specifications’. 14 Thus at Desimpl. med. fac. 3.13 (11.573 K.) Galen says that he will endeavour to give anaccount of drugs in a systematic order in accordance with the range of theirpowers, and that he will adopt as an infallible criterion for determiningwhat these powers are ‘not plausible (theoretical) accounts but qualifiedexperience’ ( ). This high degree of exactness and reliability ofqualified experience is also referred to at De simpl. med. fac. 4.23 (11.703K.). 15 Qualified experience is said to be an important instrument for testing() the power of a drug; 16 it is sometimes presented as superior equivalent to the ‘trained perception’ referred to in De comp. med. per gen. 3.2(13.570 K.), on which see Harig (1974) 82. For the use of the active perfect forms in Galensee On the Affected Parts (De locis affectis, De loc. aff.) 2.8 (8.108 K.): and De comp. med. per gen. 7.4 (13.961 K.): 14 See the instances listed in n. 9 above. The basic meaning of is ‘to discriminate’, ‘to discern’,‘to distinguish’; Galen frequently uses the noun in combination with the preposition ,thus approximating our notion of ‘criterion’, e.g. the (‘criterion based onhabits’) adopted by the Empiricists (cf. De meth. med 3.7, 10.207 K.) or the (‘criterion based on moderateness or excessiveness of the pain’)adopted by Archigenes (De comp. med. sec. loc. 3.1 (12.620 K.)). On the antecedents of this use of see below; on the meaning see Manetti and Roselli (1994) 1601, who translate the term as‘una specificazione della verità’ (e.g. of a statement by Hippocrates); Beintker and Kahlenberg (1948)translate ‘begriffliche Unterscheidung’.15 ‘Therefore, if it is possible on this basis to make inferences about the power of drugs, the bestaddition to the theory, as has been said many times, is to discover them on the basis of qualifiedexperience. For you won’t go wrong in this, even though before detecting the power by experience,taste provides most indications, with smell, as I have said, providing some additional evidence’( 16 De simpl. med. fac. 7.10 (12.38 K.): ‘This is why in our previous discussions, when we held that onemust test the power of each drug by means of qualified experience, we advised to select an affectionthat is as simple as possible’ ( ). See also De simpl. med. fac. 6.1 (11.800 K.), which conveys a goodimpression of what such a ‘qualified’ test consists of: ‘Surely when performing the test accuratelyby means of qualified experience, which we have discussed many times before, we will discover themedicinal power [sc. of wormwood] from its mixture itself. For if one crushes the foliage togetherwith the flowers (for the rest of the fruit is useless) and applies it to a clean wound, it turns outto be pungent and irritating, but if you want to soak it in olive oil and pour it over the head ordown the stomach, it will be found to be intensely heating’ ( , ).