Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

300 Late antiquityTo be sure, there is no question about Caelius’ actually belonging tothe Methodist school, to which he frequently refers as ‘our sect’ and whosedoctrines he often presents as the standard for his therapeutic instructions. 3Nor is there any doubt about Caelius’ commitment to Soranus, whom heoften mentions as the point of reference for his own work and with whomhe never expresses disagreement. 4 Yet the unprejudiced reader of AcuteAffections has to wait until chapter 11 of the first book (a good twenty pagesin Bendz and Pape’s edition) for the first reference to the ‘Method’; 5 andit is no earlier than in book 2, chapter 1 that he is told that what he ispresented with there is a Latin version of Soranus. 6To this it could be responded that this is just a matter of presentation, thatCaelius did not write for unprejudiced readers and that he must have assumedhis audience 7 to be sufficiently aware of his intellectual background 8and his indebtedness to the Methodicorum princeps. 9 Yet in the absence ofany certainty about the setting and readership of Caelius’ works one hasto be careful with such presuppositions. Moreover, there is the fact that,as far as other Methodists such as Themison, Thessalus, or more generally‘the older Methodists’ are concerned, Caelius frequently castigates them for3 E.g. Acut. 3.4.47; 2.33.179; Chron. 2.1.16.4 The entry ‘Soranus’ in the (otherwise invaluable) index nominum to Bendz and Pape’s edition preparedby J. Kollesch and D. Nickel should be used with caution, for it also lists (with some exceptions suchas Chron. 2.1.60 (p. 580,1) and Chron. 4.9.134 (p. 850,17)) occurrences of the authorial ego and nos asreferring to Soranus (this is based on their view that Caelius’ work is in the main a faithful translationof Soranus, for which see n. 2 above).5 Acut. 1.11.99: ‘This is the treatment of the affection phrenitis according to the Method’ (Haec estsecundum methodon curatio phreniticae passionis).6 Acut. 2.1.8: ‘But Soranus, whose [views] these are, which we have undertaken to present in Latin’(Soranus uero, cuius haec sunt, quae latinizanda suscepimus). Cf. Acut. 2.10.65 (where, however, theword Soranus is an editorial addition); 2.28.147; 2.31.163. For this observation – that the first referenceto Soranus occurs not earlier than here and that neither in the preface of Acute Affections nor in thatof Chronic Affections does Caelius give any indication that he is offering a translation of Soranus –and for a discussion of the other passages where Caelius defines his work as a Latinisation of Soranus(which actually represent only a small minority of all the references to Soranus) see Hanson andGreen (1994) 979, who rightly make the point that this does not really support the hypothesis thatCaelius’ work is a translation of Soranus (but their own translation of cuius haec sunt in Acut. 2.1.8and 2.10.65 as ‘his works’ is unnecessarily specific: Caelius may just mean Soranus’ views). They alsorightly stress that the relationship between Soranus’ Gynaecia and Caelius’ version of it need not bethe same as that between Soranus’ work on acute and chronic diseases and that of Caelius (contraKollesch 1990).7 Little can be said with any certainty about Caelius’ intended audience. Nothing is known of theBellicus addressed in the proem to Acute Affections, but the fact that he is addressed as ‘best pupil’(discipule summe) suggests at least some familiarity of the audience with Methodism.8 This might be inferred from the occurrence of several Methodist terms in the pages preceding Acut.1.11.99, e.g. the use of accessio in Acut. 1.4.42 and 1.5.47, and of strictura and solutio in Acut. 1.9.58 and1.9.60.9 For this characterisation of Soranus see Chron. 1.1.50.