Camden, David Hayden (Author)
Schiefsky, Mark J. (Advisor)
Harvard University
Schiefsky, Mark J.
Publication date: 2016
Language: English
Physical Details: 303 pp.
In the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, a number of “doctor-cosmologists” attempted to base the art of healing on the elements, laws, and fundamental forces that govern the universe as a whole. This study examines the major sources for this movement, with the primary goal of understanding how this movement came to be. Chapter 1 examines three second-hand reports: (1) the testimonies on Petron and Philistion in the Anonymus Londiniensis, (2) the speech of Eryximachus in Plato’s Symposium, and (3) On Ancient Medicine. Chapters 2–5 then examine the four most important works by doctor-cosmologists to have survived from the Classical period: On the Nature of the Human Being, On Breaths, On Flesh, and On Regimen. Over the course of this study, I argue that many of the same pressures that led to the production of works like On Regimen in Acute Diseases and the seven books of Epidemics can also be seen in the works of the doctor-cosmologists. All of these medical writers believed that individual variation constitutes a significant impediment to the art, and that the state of medical knowledge can be improved, even perfected, by focusing on what is “common” and “fixed,” that is, on what remains stable when other variables change. Other major conclusions include the observation that On Ancient Medicine is an unreliable witness to what the doctor-cosmologists were doing; that these doctors combined their first principles with more traditional models of pathogenesis; that many of their theories can be elucidated by considering specifically medical modes of thought; and that the author of On Regimen in particular develops a significant theory about the cosmos—a theory that is not only highly developed and internally consistent, but has many affinities with the fragments of Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Empedocles.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Couprie, Dirk L.;
Hahn, Robert;
Naddaf, Gerard;
(2003)
Anaximander in Context: New Studies in the Origins of Greek Philosophy
Article
Popa, Tiberiu;
(2014)
Scientific Method in Meteorology IV
Article
Frixione, Eugenio;
(2013)
Pneuma--Fire Interactions in Hippocratic Physiology
Article
Lennox, James G.;
(2014)
Aristotle on the Emergence of Material Complexity: Meteorology IV and Aristotle's Biology
Article
Gill, Mary Louise;
(2014)
The Limits of Teleology in Aristotle's Meteorology IV.12
Article
Macauley, David;
(2006)
The Place of the Elements and the Elements of Place: Aristotelian Contributions to Environmental Thought
Thesis
Scharle, Margaret Elizabeth;
(2005)
The Place of the Elements in Aristotle's Natural Teleology
Article
Benjamin Folit-Weinberg;
(2023)
Disappearing into Thick Aēr: The Function of Aēr in homer and Anaximenes
Article
Chang, Hasok;
(2012)
Water: The Long Road from Aristotelian Element to H2O
Book
Miller, David Phillip;
(2004)
Discovering Water: James Watt, Henry Cavendish and the Nineteenth-Century “Water Controversy”
Book
Philip Ball;
(2021)
The Elements: A Visual History of Their Discovery
Article
Iommi Echeverría, Virginia;
Amunátegui, Godofredo Iommi;
(2013)
La théorie des éléments de Christophorus Clavius et l'idée du globe terraqué
Article
Basak, Subhash C.;
(2013)
Philosophy of Mathematical Chemistry: A Personal Perspective
Article
Trépanier, Simon;
(2014)
From Wandering Limbs to Limbless Gods: δαιμων as Substance in Empedocles
Article
Lloyd, D. Robert;
(2007)
The Chemistry of Platonic Triangles: Problems in the Interpretation of the Timaeus
Chapter
Keyser, Paul T.;
(2011)
Elemental Qualities in Flux: A Reconstruction of Strato's Theory of Elements
Article
DeHart, Scott M.;
(1999)
Hippocratic Medicine and the Greek Body Image
Article
Ségal, Alain;
Truyen, Michel;
Pallardy, Guy;
(2000)
Les prémices de l'endoscopie spéculaire ou canulaire dans le “Corpus hippocraticum”
Article
Hughes, Jessica;
(2008)
Fragmentation as Metaphor in the Classical Healing Sanctuary
Article
Singer, Peter Nicholas;
(2014)
The Fight for Health: Tradition, Competition, Subdivision and Philosophy in Galen's Hygienic Writings
Be the first to comment!