Greek Rational Medicine. Philosophy and Medicine from Alcmaeon to the Alexandrians

307 Pages·1993·2.88 MB·English

by  James Longrigg

GREEK RATIONAL MEDICINE
Ratione vero opus est ipsi medicinae
(Celsus, De medicina, Proem, 48)
G RE E K RATIONAL
M E DICI N E

Philosophy and medicine
from Alcmaeon to the Alexandrians

James Longrigg

London and New York
First published 1993
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.

© 1993 James Longrigg
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Longrigg, James
Greek Rational Medicine: Philosophy and Medicine from
Alcmaeon to the Alexandrians
I. Title
610.1

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Longrigg, James
Greek rational medicine: philosophy and medicine from
Alcmaeon to the Alexandrians/James Longrigg.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Medicine, Greek and Roman. I. Title.
R138.L65 1993
610´.938–dc20 92–28865

ISBN 0-203-03344-2 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-20793-9 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-02594-X (Print Edition)
For Thomas and Elizabeth

Contents

Preface viii
Introduction 1
1 Pre-rational and irrational medicine in Greece and
neighbouring cultures 6
2 Ionian natural philosophy and the origins of
rational medicine 26
3 Philosophy and medicine in the fifth century I:
Alcmaeon and the pre-Socratic philosophers 47
4 Philosophy and medicine in the fifth century II:
Pre-Socratic philosophy and the Hippocratic Corpus 82
5 Post-Hippocratic medicine I: Medicine and the
Academy 104
6 Post-Hippocratic medicine II: Medicine from Lyceum
to Museum 149
7 Early Alexandrian medical science 177
Appendix: The role of the opposites in
pre-Aristotelian physics 220
Notes 227
Bibliography 260
Index locorum 278
General index 287

vii
Preface

The Greeks invented rational medicine. In an effort to ensure that
this outstanding achievement was accorded proper recognition
within our classical curriculum at the University of Newcastle, I set
up ten years or so ago a course on the history of Greek medicine.
It is, I believe, the only one of its kind offered within classics
departments in the United Kingdom. In teaching this course it
soon became apparent that my students required some assistance
in disentangling the highly complex relationship between
philosophy and medicine in the classical period. This book has
been written with the modest hope that it might prove to be of
some assistance here. Since the majority of my students have little
or no knowledge of classical Greek, I have also taken the
opportunity to translate and quote at some length a good many
passages from our original sources of evidence. Although, in this
latter respect, it has been suggested that a choice of less familiar
source material would enable me to invest this book with a greater
degree of novelty, I decided, however, only selectively to follow
this advice. My reasons for doing so are threefold. In the first
place, some of the more familiar passages illustrate the points at
issue far more effectively than any alternative would do. (This,
after all, is largely why these texts are familiar.) Again, I thought it
would seem rather perverse to seek to illustrate inter-relationships
between philosophy and medicine without reference in detail to
such texts as Ancient Medicine (De vetere medicina) and Sacred Disease
(De morbo sacro). And, of course, not all who read this book (it is
hoped) will be specialists in this subject.
Papers based upon research in progress for this work have been
presented at the Wellcome Institute in London, and at the
universities of Glasgow, Manchester, St Andrews, Newcastle,
Oxford, Durham, Warwick and Leiden. In response to editorial
viii
PREFACE
invitations certain aspects of this material have been given a
preliminary ‘airing’ in History of Science and in The British Journal for
the History of Science. I am grateful to the editors of these journals
for their permission to reproduce this material in the place for
which it was originally intended.
I should like to express also my deep gratitude to the Wellcome
Trust for twice awarding me a Research Fellowship in the History
of Medicine, which enabled me to pursue my researches without
distraction; to the University of Newcastle upon Tyne for granting
me study leave on both occasions, and to the Small Grants
Research Committee for subventions which enabled me to work at
the Wellcome Library in London.
I am grateful to Professor Drachmann and to the Editor of
Artemis Verlag for their kind permission to reproduce (with slight
modifications) figure 7b on p. 209.
I am most grateful to Nancy Longrigg for preparing the indices.
Last, but by no means least, I should like to acknowledge the
great kindness of Dr Vivian Nutton of the Wellcome Institute, who
read the whole of an early draft of this work, and of Dr Hans
Gottschalk of the university of Leeds, who read the penultimate
chapter. Their comments have proved invaluable.
Hamsterley Mill, Durham
April 1992
ix