Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

Introduction 27do not make a categorical distinction between ‘mind’ and ‘body’: all mentalaffections are presented as being of a physical nature and having a physicalcause. And even those authors who speak about ‘soul’ ( psuchē ) as distinctfrom the body, such as the author of On Regimen, still conceive of the soulas something physical, whose workings and failings can be described inmaterial terms – for example a particular blend of fire and water – andinfluenced by dietary measures.In this connection, a further major medical writer beyond the HippocraticCorpus must be mentioned. Praxagoras of Cos is usually referredto in the handbooks of the history of medicine mainly for his ‘discovery’of the difference between veins and arteries, his doctrine of the pulse andhis assumption of the so-called ‘vitreous’ humour. A closer study of theextant material reveals interesting ‘philosophical’ features such as reflectionon inference from signs, distinctions between various types of causes andsymptoms; and of course Praxagoras presents a further intriguing exampleof a doctor connecting Hippocratic medical views (after all, he camefrom Cos), Alexandrian medicine (he was the teacher of Herophilus) andChrysippus and the early Stoa.Praxagoras thus marks the transition from the classical to what has cometo be known as the ‘Hellenistic’ period. Here, again, interaction between thedomains of philosophy, medicine and science was particularly lively. To dojustice to all the relevant developments of that extremely significant periodwould require a separate volume; some brief remarks must suffice here,which are important for the understanding of what is at issue in chapters 10and 11. As in the case of Diocles and Praxagoras, our knowledge of the actualviews held by the main protagonists in Hellenistic medicine is obscuredby the fact that all their works have been lost and the remaining evidenceis fraught with difficulties as a result of fragmentation and distortion bythe source-authors. Yet thanks in particular to some recent major scholarlycontributions, both with regard to the ancient philosophical schools andtheir cultural context and to medicine and science, our view of the relevantstages has been significantly enhanced. 31First, as I have already mentioned, there is the very significant role ofAristotelianism in the development of medical research, as testified by thefragments of authors in the Peripatetic tradition itself such as Theophrastusand Strato, or by the compilation of medical ideas as found in the Pseudo-Aristotelian Problemata physica. But also later Peripatetics such as Clearchusand Dicaearchus display a keen interest in medical and physiological31 See especially von Staden (1989), Garofalo (1988) and Guardasole (1997).