Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

On the Sacred Disease 59M), 36 which has instead of , and to take the diseases as thesubject of : ‘in this way (or, in this respect) they are divine’ ( ’ ). On this reading, ‘in this way’ refers to their being caused by thecauses () just mentioned. Strictly speaking, this is syntacticallyawkward, as in the preceding sentence the word (‘disease’) isused, which would demand a plural verb form (; but might bedefended by understanding (‘the diseases’) as its subject, theword being used in the immediately following dependent clause. 37On this reading the problem of the shift of the use of theios disappearsas well.One other problem remains, to which I see no completely satisfactoryanswer. Even if, as a consequence of this interpretation, the enumerationof causes in 18.1 is extended by understanding ‘the things that come and goaway’ as referring to air, water and food, the absence of the brain, whichwas claimed to be the cause of the disease (3.1, 6.366 L.), is striking. Wecould suppose, as I have suggested above, that a distinction between aitiosand prophasis is implicitly present here: for it is true that, for instance,chapters 13–16 explain how the winds affect the brain and so cause diseases,and the author’s claim that the brain is aitios leaves open various possibilitiesfor the account of the prophasies. But then the question remains why it isonly these prophasies which are mentioned here in chapter 18, for it seemsvery improbable that they are more important as constitutive elements ofthe nature of the disease than the cause of the disease, the brain. Perhapsthe point of mentioning them here is that they are the prophasies of alldiseases, and that by showing this the author only strives to put epilepsyon an equal level with the other diseases. If this is correct, the reason fornot mentioning the brain and other internal factors is not that they are notconstitutive of the divine character of the disease (for on this interpretationthey are) but that they do not play a part in all other diseases (3.1: ‘thegreatest’, ). Another possibility is to say that the divinity ofthe disease resides in the regular pattern of the process of its origin and36 See Grensemann (1968c) 31–9; Jones in Jones and Withington (1923–31) vol. iv, 135–7. [Postscript:See also Roselli (1996) 87 and 103 n. 105, who accepts this reading and translates ‘quanto a questo(le malattie) sono divine’ (though she does not print it in the Greek text on p. 86). Laskaris (2002,122 n. 77) and Jouanna (2003, 130–1) discuss the problem but prefer to stick to the reading .]37 An anonymous referee has pointed to the use of in the final sentence of ch. 17. However,it is hard to believe that, on the reading , we should take this as referring to these ,since in the intermediate sentence (18.1) several neuter terms have been used. Alternatively, onemight perhaps even consider reading ’ and understand as thesubject (‘in this respect the disease is divine’). But this makes difficult to account for,and it is, of course, not just choosing between two variant readings but emending the text as well.