clas3051 philosophy and medicine before (or outside) hippocrates
TRANSCRIPT
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