Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

62 Hippocratic Corpus and Diocles of Carystuscases the illness is too strong for medical drugs (2.3, 6.364 L.; 11.6, 6.382 L.).It may be doubted whether the author would regard an appeal to the godsin such cases as useless. Admittedly, one of his concerns is that epilepsyshould be treated no differently from any other disease; but he nowherecategorically rejects any appeal to the gods for the healing of hopeless cases.These remarks may seem speculative and ill-founded, but I will qualify thisissue below.Thirdly, it is supposed that the word phusis is used here in the sense of‘Nature’ or even ‘the laws of Nature’, or in any case of something generaland universal, an all-pervading principle, comparable to the use of phusis inPresocratic philosophy, for example in treatises entitled ‘On Nature’ ( periphuseōs). But in the text of On the Sacred Disease the word phusis is usedalmost exclusively to denote the specific nature or character of the disease(18.2: ‘each of them has a nature and a power of its own’). 41 Admittedly insome cases the author makes more general claims concerning the items ofhis explanation, 42 but it cannot be maintained that his explanation of thedisease makes explicit use of general patterns or principles like the archaiof the Presocratic philosophers.Apart from the question whether these generalisations are justified, thereis evidence from the text itself that it is wrong to attribute such a ‘naturalistic’theology to the author of On the Sacred Disease. In the polemical firstchapter of the treatise, in his objections against the ideas and the practicesof the magicians, we can find several implicit presuppositions which donot make sense within such a naturalistic conception of the divine. Thisapplies particularly to the accusations of impiety (asebeia) and atheism(atheos) which begin in 1.28 (6.358 L.) and which are continued in 1.39ff.(6. 362 L.). First, the writer criticises his opponents for making impiousclaims, for example that they can influence the movements of sun andmoon and the weather. This claim, the author says, amounts to believingthat the gods neither exist nor have any power, and that what is said tobe divine actually becomes human, since on this claim the power of thedivine ‘is overcome and has been enslaved’ (1.31, 6.360 L.: ) by human reason. I do not mean to say that we may inferfrom this that the author of On the Sacred Disease believes the movements ofthe sun and the moon and the weather-phenomena to be manifestations ofdivine agency (cf. note 26 above). The hypothetical sentences (note the useof in 1.29 and 1.31) show that he blames his opponents for behaving41 See Nörenberg (1968) 49–61, 80.42 For instance 2.4 (6.364 L.), 3.1 (6.366 L.), 18.5–6 (6.396 L.).