Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

On the Sacred Disease 73Laskaris and Jouanna prefer to keep the other reading . Accordingto Jouanna, the author in the course of his argument develops the notionof prophasis in the sense of external catalyst (‘cause déclenchante due auxfacteurs extérieurs’) and in the end distinguishes it from that of phusis, thenatural cause or ‘law’ determining the development of the disease (‘causenaturelle et lois de développement de la maladie’). He concludes that thereis no contradiction, since both external causal factors and the internal ‘nature’of the disease are subject to the same natural laws and therefore divine(‘Il n’y a aucune contradiction selon l’auteur entre une maladie divine àcause de sa phusis ou à cause de sa prophasis. Tout cela est de l’ordre dudivin dans la mesure où tous ces phénomènes obéissent à des lois naturellesqui sont les mêmes aussi bien à l’extérieur de l’homme qu’en l’homme, loisqui sont indépendantes de l’intervention humaine’ (2003, 130–1)). I stillthink that this does not fully address the problems I raise in my discussionof this passage and reads too many elements in the text which are not explicitlystated (e.g. the notion of ‘natural law’), although I concede, as I didin my original paper, that my suggestion to read is not free fromdifficulties either.I have discussed the relationship between On the Sacred Disease and Airs,Waters, Places in van der Eijk (1991), arriving at the view that there is noreason to believe that the two treatises are by different authors; similarconclusions have been arrived at (apparently independently) by Bruun(1997); see also Jouanna (1996) 71–3 and (2003) lxx–lxxiv. I have discussedthe similar structure of the argumentation in On the Sacred Disease andin Aristotle’s On Divination in Sleep in van der Eijk (1994) 294–5 (see alsoHankinson (1998c) making a similar point). I have dealt at greater lengthwith the religious beliefs of the author of On Regimen in van der Eijk(2004a).On the question of ‘the divine’ in other Hippocratic treatises seeLichtenthaeler (1992) onPrognostic, and Flemming and Hanson (1998)on Diseases of Young Women.