Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

On the Sacred Disease 57is mentioned. Of course the validity of this argument depends on theassumption of a common author of On the Sacred Disease and Airs, Waters,Places and on the presumption that he has not changed his opinion on thesubject – a long-standing issue which is still a matter of disagreement. Itis evident that this question would have to be settled on other grounds aswell, for possible divergencies in the concepts of the divine expressed inthe two treatises might equally well be taken as ground for assuming twodifferent authors. 33Perhaps none of these considerations can be regarded as genuine objections.But it can hardly be denied that the first interpretation necessarily presupposesall of them and that the champions of this interpretation shouldtake account of them. It therefore remains to consider whether the secondinterpretation (2) rests on less complicated presuppositions.On this interpretation the disease is divine in virtue of having a phusis,a‘nature’ (in the sense defined above: a regular pattern of origin and growth).This appears to be closer to the text of the three passages quoted: themention of phusis in 1.2 and 2.1–2 in the immediate context of the claimthat epilepsy is not more divine than other diseases can easily be understood,since it is exactly its ‘having a nature’ which constitutes the divine characterof the disease. A further advantage of this interpretation is that the referent of‘the same (i.e. origin)’ ( ) is immediately supplied by the context(‘have a nature from which each of them arises’, ... ) and that in 18.2 the sentence ‘and each of them has a nature and apower of its own, and none is hopeless or impossible to deal with’ ( ...’) can be taken as providing the explanationof ‘all are divine and all are human’ ( ):all diseases are divine in virtue of having a nature and a power of theirown, and all are human in virtue of being capable of human treatment andcure, with the phrase ‘none is hopeless or impossible to deal with’ ( ’) answering ‘it is in no respect less curablethan the others . . . ’ ( )in2.3 (6.364 L.).This corresponds very well with the use of ‘human’ in theauthor’s criticism of the magicians (1.25, 6.358 L.; 1.31, 6.360 L.): whereas intheir conception of the divinity of the disease ‘divine’ and ‘human’ excludeeach other, the author regards it as one of his merits to have shown that33 On this question see, e.g., Heinimann (1945) 181–206; a useful summary of the discussion is given byNörenberg (1968) 9–11; on the significance of similarities and discrepancies between the two treatisesfor the question of their authorship cf. Grensemann (1968c) 7–18 and the interesting analysis byDucatillon (1977) 197–226; see also van der Eijk (1991).