Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

56 Hippocratic Corpus and Diocles of Carystusthe statement sounds too strange to be accepted as a self-evident idea notneeding explanation.Finally, as was already noted by Nestle, 31 the restricted interpretation of‘the divine’ as the climatic factors is absent (and out of the question) in theparallel discussion of the divine character of diseases in chapter 22 of Airs,Waters, Places. Although the writer of Airs, Waters, Places, in accordancewith the overall purpose of his treatise, generally assigns to climatic factorsa fundamental role in his explanation of health and disease, he does notsay anything about their allegedly divine character and surprisingly doesnot, in his discussion of the divinity of diseases in chapter 22, explainthis with an appeal to climatic factors. In the case discussed there (thefrequent occurrence of impotence among the Scythians) the prophasies ofthe disease are purely ‘human’ factors, 32 and no influence of climatic factors( ), the distribution of (or , which is the varia lectio) and suggests thatin the author’s opinion the first thing for the physician to do is to identify the nature of the pathologicalsituation (which consists in diagnosis and, as the text says, in determining the extent towhich the disease exceeds the strength of the patient’s body) and at the same time to see whether‘something divine’ is present in the disease in question. As the structure of the sentence (the useof the participle and of the infinitive ) indicates, it cannot be maintained (asKudlien believes) that a distinction is made here between diseases which result in death and diseasesof divine, i.e. (in Kudlien’s view) climatic, origin; as the context shows, the physician should checkfirst whether the disease is capable of being cured lest, if not, he will be blamed for the patient’sdeath ( ), thus clearly refers to (the word being now used because the of the has been recognised), and can only referto . Another objection to Kudlien’s view is that the wording apparently implies that a certain disease may (but need not) contain a divineelement, whereas if meteorological or environmental medicine were referred to here, it would onlybe possible to say that a disease has a climatic cause or that it has not. Nor is Kudlien’s referenceto ch. 25 convincing evidence for his view, for there the author is not concerned with causes ofdiseases, but with symptoms. Besides, we may wonder whether his claim that in different areas thesignificance of the symptoms remains the same is compatible with the principles of environmentalmedicine as stated in Airs, Waters, Places. I see no other possibility than to interpret the passage asa recognition (which may be quite perfunctory or just in order to be on the safe side) that in somecases a disease may be sent by a god and that, consequently, in these cases human treatment is useless(so that the physician cannot be blamed for therapeutic failure) and, perhaps (though this is notexplicitly stated), that it can only be cured by divine agency; nor do I see why this interpretationwould be inconceivable (for a similar case cf. On the Nature of the Woman 1, where the possibilitythat a divine element is present in diseases is recognised, without this possibility being specified orexplained or taken into account in the course of the treatise).31 Nestle (1938) 4–5.32 The explanation of the Scythians’ impotence is that owing to their habit of horse-riding they areafflicted with varicosity of the veins followed by lameness. Then they try to cure themselves by meansof cutting the vein which runs behind each ear. It is this treatment which causes their impotence.Later on in the chapter (sections 11–12 Diller, 2.80 L.) it is only the practice of horse-riding (with theconsequent swelling of the joints) which is mentioned as the prophasis of the disease, to which areadded their wearing trousers, as well as cold and fatigue (here psuchos is mentioned, but it obviouslyrefers to getting cold when riding on horseback for a long time).