Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

The Methodism of Caelius Aurelianus 305try to compare Caelius Aurelianus with Soranus (or with the fragments ofother Methodists), 38 but this comparison is complicated by the differentstatus of the extant works; for Soranus’ Gynaecia, his only major survivingwork, is a very specialised treatise, and a very practical one at that, whereasCaelius’ Acute and Chronic Affections deal with what may be called thecentral concern of Methodism, namely the diagnosis and treatment of diseases.39 Now we know, for example, from a passage in Caelius Aurelianus 40that the Methodists were keen to distinguish between different specialisedareas within medicine, such as surgery, pharmacology and dietetics, and toassign the discussion of a particular aspect of a particular disease to onearea rather than another. This strong sense of compartmentalisation is apotential source of discrepancies, and hence of apparent inconsistencies,between the ways a certain subject is dealt with in different contexts.Yet also the possible explanation of tensions inherent in Methodism itselfshould be used with some caution. On the one hand, historians of ancientmedicine have recently stressed that Methodism is not a philosophy but away of doing medicine, and a thoroughly practical way of doing medicineat that – though admittedly not without relation to philosophy – and thisshould make us careful not to approach Methodism as if it were an appliedform of Scepticism. 41 After all, practicability was not the major concern, orindeed the major strength, of Scepticism. On the other hand, we shoulddemand from Caelius a reasonable degree of consistency and systematicity(although we may have to allow for some flexibility in the extent to whichthis is implemented or for potential divergences between theory and practice).The point is that doctrinal and methodological tensions may, in thecase of Methodism, find their origin in the fact that the primary concernof Methodism is the successful diagnosis and treatment of diseases, and inthe Methodists’ belief that all issues that are not necessarily related to this(such as the question of what the cause of a disease is, or what its correctdefinition is, or which part of the body is affected by the disease, etc.) areconsidered to be irrelevant or inappropriate. The important consequenceof this is that the Methodists might have been perfectly well aware of some38 See now Moog (1994) [and Tecusan (2004)].39 Incidentally, one might conclude from this that, other things being equal, for the reconstruction ofmainstream Methodist doctrine we are in a much better position with Caelius Aurelianus than withSoranus (contra Lloyd (1983) 185–6: ‘For our purposes the extant original Greek of the Gynaecologyis both more reliable and more interesting than the paraphrastic Latin versions of his Acute andChronic Diseases that we have from Caelius Aurelianus’).40 Chron. 2.12.146. Cf.Sor.,Gyn. 1.4.41 This point has been made by Gourevitch (1991) 67–8 against Edelstein (1967b) 173–91. See alsoLloyd (1983) 183.