Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

Introduction 41from Pergamum. And, as I have shown elsewhere, the works of CaeliusAurelianus present a further example of medical literature full of rhetoricaland argumentative fireworks. 63The topics discussed above may give some idea of the problems to beaddressed in a study of the forms of ancient scientific writing and show howsuch a study should not focus exclusively on linguistic and textual matters,but take into account also the contexts and circumstances that influencethe form a scientific speech act takes. At the same time, it will have becomeclear that these formal aspects of Greek and Latin medical writing are ofgreat significance when it comes to the use of these texts as sources forwhat used to be seen as the primary jobs of the medical historian, namelythe reconstruction of the nosological reality of the past and of the humanresponse to this reality.7 historiography, tradition andself-definitionWhen discussing the rhetoric of ancient medical, scientific and philosophicaldiscourse, one further, related development in scholarship may finally bementioned here briefly: the study of the ‘self-definition’ or Selbstverständnisof Greek and Roman scientific writers, especially their understanding oftheir own discipline and its historicity, and the way in which that understandingwas expressed, both explicitly and implicitly, in their own work.I have dealt with this area more elaborately in a separate collaborative volumeon medical doxography and historiography. 64 It has, of course, longbeen realised that reflection on the achievements of the past was, from theearliest stages of Greek thought up to late antiquity, an integral part of mostintellectual projects of some ambition and profoundly influenced scientificand philosophical practice and research as well as theoretical reflection andrhetorical presentation of ideas. Many ancient medical writers, philosophersand scientists (as well as historians) regarded themselves as part of a longtradition, and they explicitly discussed the value of this tradition, and theirown contribution to it, in a prominent part of their own written work, oftenin the preface. Yet, more recently, scholarship has drawn attention to thelarge variety of ways in which ancient scientific and philosophical discoursereceived and reused traditional material and to the many different purposesand strategies the description of this material served. Ancient writers onscience and philosophy received and constructed particular versions of the63 See van der Eijk (1999c). 64 See van der Eijk (1999a), especially ch. 1.