Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

The Methodism of Caelius Aurelianus 321as attested particularly in Soranus’ contemporaries, the Pneumatists, whoseem to have used definitions as a means of codifying knowledge abouta disease in a form which easily facilitates memory and thus transmission(which is related to the role of definitions in doxographic traditions). 79 TheMethodists object to this because in many cases a disease is too complicateda phenomenon to be caught in such a short verbal statement: some definitionssuffer from inaccuracy, others from incompleteness; and yet othersare criticised for containing irrelevant elements, such as references to antecedentcauses (which are not peculiar to the disease in question). It seemsthat Caelius and Soranus are not against definitions as such, but againsttoo automatic and uncritical an application of them, and to the misleadingexpectations this use raises. They do, however, engage in definitionsthemselves from time to time, and even include the cause in the definitionif this is relevant to its treatment or to the distinction of various species ofthe disease.What strikes one here is the flexibility with which Caelius uses theselogical tools. There is no unqualified rejection of them, no dogmatic refusalto use them because they are Dogmatist and thus to be dismissed. In eachparticular case it must be considered whether they are relevant or not, and,if they are, what shape they should take. This flexibility is comparable toCaelius’ attitude to nomenclature: in some cases he says that the nameof a disease is totally arbitrary and it is useless to quarrel about why thedisease acquired its particular name; 80 but in other cases, where its name issignificant, Caelius does not fail to draw this to his readers’ attention. 814 ratio and experimentumThe distinction between reason and experience played a crucial role in thedebates between the medical sects of later antiquity. In these debates, theMethodists are usually represented as having taken the following position:they relied primarily on what is manifest to the senses and were hostile toa priori reasoning, 82 although on the other hand their Asclepiadean heritageand terminology (not to mention their therapy and pharmacology) woulddistinguish them from the Empiricists. Thus Methodism may be said tohave steered a kind of middle course between two extremes by reactingcritically to both the Empiricists and the Dogmatists, while at the same time79 Cf. Acut. 3.19.189. Also, according to Acut. 1.1.20, Asclepiades wrote a book entitled Diffinitiones.80 E.g. Chron. 5.2.28. 81 E.g. Chron. 3.1.1–2.82 E.g. Sextus Empiricus, Outline of Pyrrhonism 1.236ff.; Galen, De sectis 6 (p. 12 Helmreich, 1.79 K.).