CLAS3051

Philosophy and Medicine Before (or Outside) Hippocrates

Review: The Milesian School Thales, Anaxmander, Anaxamenes

during 6th C. BC (Longrigg distinguishes from Presocratics of 5th

C., whom he calls 'Presocratics') What do they have in common:

What kinds of problems interest them? What sorts of answers do they give?

What differentiates them? How does this pertain to medicine?

Anaximander et al.

Longrigg III.1 “Things also pass away into those things out of

which they cominto existence according to necessity; for they pay penalty and retribution to one another for their injustice according to the assessment of Time”

On what is he basing his thought? What other influences?

Heraclitus of Ephesus

“It is necessary to realize that war is common, and strife justice, and that everything happens in accordance with strife and necessity” Origen Against Celsus 6.42.21-3

“They are ignorant of how while tending away it agrees with itself – a back-turning harmony, like a bow or a lyre” Hippolytus Refutation of All Heresies 9.9.2.2-4

Poetic Thought

“Even terrifying and the most mighty forces recognize rights. Winter with its snowdrifts yields to summer with its crops, and the weary round of night makes way for the white-horsed chariot of day, so that she may kindle her light” Sophocles Ajax 669-73

Balance in Archaic Religious Thought

Μηδέν Άγαν written over temple of Delphi: “nothing in excess” This is command

concept of Nemesis > Greek nemoh 'to apportion' Not necessarily divine retribution

Balance in Archaic and Early Classical Political Thought

Reformers of the same period, such as Solon (early 6th c.), take the same approach in politics:

“I stood out like a wolf at bay amidst a pack of hounds, defending myself against attacks from every side.... I set myself up as a barrier” in Arist. Ath. Pol.

Cleisthenes, inventor of Athenian democracy (early 5th c.)), called his system isonomia iso- 'equal' nomia 'apportioning' L III.2 Alcmaeon holds that what preserves health is

the isonomia of the powers

Opposites, Balance and Health

Longrigg III.3 How is this informed by human analogy?

Shift Focus to the West

Alcmaeon from Croton

Empedocles from Agrigentum

Philistion of Lokri Epizephyrii

Empedocles of Agrigentum

A wonder-worker, philosopher, scientist and doctor, all rolled in one LIII.11-12

Said to have driven away a poisonous wind Said to have restored to life a woman who was

breathless for 30 days Takes interest in physiology, using it as basis for

physics 5th century BC

Empedocles' Physics

Combines two strands we have followed Provides four 'roots' of matter: air, water, fire and

earth LIII.13-14 (In process discovers that 'air' is a body, not water

vapour or empty space) As painters can make all colours with three

pigments, so all things are from four roots

Empedocles' Physics, Cont.

Forces of love philia and strife neikos In constant oscillation, with love joining all and

strife on outside, then strife separating all, and love on outside

Combines for explanation of physiology: e.g. LIII.16

L 111.16 “Even as when a man, intending to make a long

journey through the wintery night, makes ready a light, a flame of blazing fire, fastens to it linen screens against all manner of winds and they scatter the blasts of the ever-blowing winds, but the light leaping out through them, shines across the threshold with unfailing beams, as much as it is finer; even so did she give birth to the round-eyed pupil, the primeval fire, enclosed in membranes and fine tissues. These keep out the deep water that surround the pupil, but they let through the fire, as much as it is finer.

Empedocles, AD 1999

Major fragment of his work found in late 90's

Points to one, big poem

Includes prophesies of being pursued by the Furies for eating meat

Four-element Theory of Matter

Tremendous success Only in Enlightenment

was it dispelled Robert Boyle's

Sceptical Chymist (1661)

Intellectual Trends in 5th C. Medical Thought

Method: deduction gives way to empirical analysis

Subject: the macroscopic to the specific

Philistion of Locri

Adopts Empedocles' theory, and grafts in to the Presocratic idea of balance or tension between opposites

LIII.5 (what is the provenance of this document?) Taken by Plato, too LIII.6

Theory of the Humours Hippocratic writings

(LIII.4) Galen (2nd c. AD) Middle Ages Black bile: depression Yellow bile: wife-

beating Phlegm: reluctance Blood: amorous

Democritus

Atomist, competing vision to four-element theory

Explains sense perception (LIII.22)

Respiration and death (LIII.21)

Xenophanes: Sceptical, Empirical

Frontal assault on religion “If cows and horses or lions had hands, or could

draw with their hands and make things as men can, hourses would have drawn horse-like gods, cows cow-like gods, and each species would have made the gods' bodies just like their own”

“The gods did not intimate all things to men straight away, but in time, through seeking, their discoveries improve”

LIII.8-9

Alcmaeon of Croton

Similar empiricism: LIII.7 How does he represent sense organs in

Presocratic terms? LIII.10 What is his conception of health? Upon what

metaphors does it rest? LIII.2