Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

The Methodism of Caelius Aurelianus 325the Dogmatists’ views on the treatment of diseases to be pathetically anddangerously erroneous; but it is the Empiricists’ claim to be basing themselveson experience which, so to speak, invites them to be singled out forCaelius’ most vehement castigation. 96However, Caelius’ acceptance of reason as a source of knowledge is notrestricted to therapeutics (where it may seem to amount to a sort of practicalreasoning based on experience, common sense and perhaps some specialisedknowledge about medicaments):(iii) Ratio may also be used as an instrument of theoretical knowledge aboutinternal states of the body. Once again, the chapter on haemorrhage(sanguinis fluor) is important:(36) Interiorum uero eruptionum diuisuras urgente solutionis coenoteta[m] ipsammagis cogimur iudicare, siquidem prior oculis occurrat solutio ac deinde diuisuraratione atque intellectu mentis apprehendi uideatur. (Chron. 2.12.147, quoted earlierunder nos. 4 and 11)Yet as for the wounds that occur as a result of haemorrhage in the inner parts,since the generality of looseness prevails, we must judge it rather as just that,since it presents itself first to the eyes as a looseness, and after that it seems to beapprehended as a wound by reason and by an understanding of the mind. 97This passage stands in a very complicated argument about the generality towhich haemorrhage is to be assigned, and the chapter is of great importancefor the Methodist doctrine of the generalities (for it suggests that thereare actually more than three generalities – ulcus, ruptio, emissio also seemto be among them – and that the question of generalities is different insurgery from in dietetics and pharmacology). 98 The argument is furthercomplicated by a polemic against Thessalus and by a division of medicineinto treatment by surgery, on the one hand, and treatment by diet and drugs,on the other. The question which Caelius addresses is whether haemorrhageshould be regarded as a wound (incisura or diuisura) or as a loose state(solutio), and Thessalus is presented by Caelius as arguing that, since ableeding at the surface of the body is clearly a wound, and since differencesin location do not affect the question of generality, internal bleeding mustalso be regarded as a wound. To this Caelius replies, first, that haemorrhage96 Cf. Acut. 3.4.45.97 For another example of the use of ratio as an instrument of mental apprehension see Chron. 2.1.14:‘Itis theoretically plausible that the other individual inner parts are also affected by paralysis, such as thelungs . . . but the death of the patient prevents us from recognising this. These facts often escape ournotice, since there are no signs peculiar to them that indicate them’ (Est autem ratione credibile ceterorumquoque interiorum singula paralysi uitiari, ut pulmonem . . . praeueniri apprehensionemorte[m] patientis; quae saepe latent facta, cum non propria possint apprehensione signari).98 This is confirmed by Galen, De optima secta 32 (1.192–3 K.).