Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

36 Medicine and Philosophy in Classical AntiquityAncient Medicine 48 and the author of On Diseases 1, who seems to referto a similar situation of public question and answer on medicine. 49 It isby no means inconceivable that some of the medical works preserved inthe Hippocratic Corpus were actually delivered orally for a predominantlynon-specialist audience, some possibly in the setting of a rhetorical contest;and it is quite possible that, for example, On the Sacred Disease was amongthis group too. Such a situation is almost certainly envisaged by the authorsof the two rhetorically most elaborate works preserved in the Corpus,the already mentioned On the Art of Medicine and On Breaths, in whichGorgianic figures of speech and sound effects abound, such as parallelism,antithesis and anaphora. 50 As mentioned above, it has long been doubtedwhether these works were actually written by doctors; yet their style andcharacter fit in very well with the competitive setting of ancient medicinereferred to earlier, and they are apparently aimed at self-definition and selfassertionof a discipline whose scientific nature (technē ) was not beyonddispute.However, the oral transmission of medical knowledge not only served thepurpose of self-presentation to a larger, non-specialised audience, but alsohad a didactic, educational justification: medicine being the practical artit naturally is, the importance of oral teaching and direct contact betweenthe teacher and the pupil is repeatedly stressed. Thus both Aristotle andhis medical contemporary Diocles of Carystus acknowledge the usefulnessof written knowledge for the medical profession, but they emphasise that48 The author of On Ancient Medicine begins his work by referring to ‘all who have attempted to speak orto write on medicine and who have assumed for themselves a postulate as a basis for their discussion’(1.1, 1.570 L.); and later on, in ch. 20 of the same work, he expresses his disdain for ‘whatever hasbeen said or written down by a sophist or a doctor about nature’ (20.2, 1.622 L.). Likewise, the authorof On the Nature of Man refers to an audience ‘used to listening to people who speak about the natureof man beyond what is relevant for medicine’ (ch. 1, 6.32 L.); and further on in the same chapter hedescribes how the people referred to are engaged in a rhetorical contest in which they try to gain theupper hand in front of an audience: ‘The best way to realise this is to be present at their debates.Given the same debaters and the same audience, the same man never wins in the discussion threetimes in succession, but now one is victor, now another, now he who happens to have the most glibtongue in the face of the crowd. Yet it is right that a man who claims correct knowledge about thefacts should maintain his own argument victorious always, if his knowledge be knowledge of realityand if he set it forth correctly. But in my opinion such men by their lack of understanding overthrowthemselves in the words of their very discussions, and establish the theory of Melissus’ (6.34 L., tr.Jones in Jones and Withington (1923–31) vol. iv, 5).49 ‘Anyone who wishes to ask correctly about healing, and, on being asked, to reply and rebut correctly,must consider the following . . . When you have considered these questions, you must pay carefulattention in discussions, and when someone makes an error in one of these points in his assertions,questions, or answers . . . then you must catch him there and attack him in your rebuttal’, On Diseases1.1 (6.140–2 L., tr. Potter (1988) vol. v, 99–101).50 A comprehensive account of these stylistic devices can be found in Jouanna’s edition of the twoworks; Jouanna (1988a) 10–24 and 169–73.