Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

58 Hippocratic Corpus and Diocles of Carystusin his conception the words can perfectly well be predicated of the samesubject. Theios and anthrōpinos refer to aspects of diseases, but not, as inthe first interpretation, in the sense of their being caused by divine factorsand human factors (which would after all imply the incompatibility ofthe two words). 34 On this reading, the problem of the ‘derived divinity’or of the ‘shift’ of the use of theios, as well as the need to take kai in18.1 as explicative, disappears. Furthermore, on this view On the SacredDisease and Airs, Waters, Places express the same doctrine concerning thedivinity of diseases, and in both treatises the use of theios is justified bythe connotations ‘unchanging’, ‘imperishable’ and ‘eternal’. The fact thatall diseases have a nature, a definite pattern of origin and growth or causeand effect, constitutes the element of ‘constancy’ which inheres in the wordtheios. Perhaps also the connotation of ‘oneness’ or ‘definiteness’ is presenthere, in that all the various and heterogeneous symptoms and expressionsof the disease, which the magicians attributed to different gods (1.32–9,6.360–2 L.), can be reduced to one fixed nature underlying them. 35There are, however, two difficulties involved in this interpretation, thefirst of which is precisely the basis of the other view: the phrase ‘these thingsare divine’ ( ’ , 18.2). To be sure, the divine character ofthe factors mentioned in 18.1 might now, on the second interpretation,be better understood, as these factors too probably have a phusis and aretherefore divine. But in order to understand the divinity of the diseasethe mention of the divine character of these factors is, strictly speaking,irrelevant, because it suffices for the author to have demonstrated that thedisease is caused by natural factors which constitute its phusis. It is the factof the disease having these causes (i.e. its having a phusis), not the allegedlydivine character of these causes, which determines its divinity.A possible solution to this problem is to adopt the reading of themanuscript (which is in general not less reliable than the other authority34 As 1.25 (6.358 L.) and 1.31 (6.360 L.) show, the words theios and anthrōpinos are not applied to concretefactors, but to aspects which are expressed in the form of propositions: ‘it belongs to divinity to . . . ’or ‘we use the word divine when . . . ’.35 But it is dangerous to explain the author’s connection of ‘divine’ with ‘having a nature’ by meansof associations like ‘rational’ or ‘the rationality of nature’. It is highly questionable whether theauthor of On the Sacred Disease can be credited with the identification of the divine with ‘rational’or ‘knowable’: the only explicit statement which might support this association is his criticism of theidea that what is divine cannot be known or understood (1.4: ‘their hopelessness of not knowing’, ; 13.13: ‘nor is it more hopeless [than other diseases] . . . neither as far ascuring nor as far as understanding it is concerned’, ... ;cf. n. 13 above); but this does not imply that the divine is (in the Platonic sense) the knowable parexcellence. Nor does the association of theios with the ‘laws’ of Nature have any textual basis (on thedifference between the nature of the disease and Nature in general see below, pp. 60, 68–9).