guerlac1948

Philosophical Review
Philosophy and Medicine in Ancient Greece by W. H. S. Jones
Review by: Henry Guerlac
The Philosophical Review, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Jul., 1948), pp. 423-425
Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical Review
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REVIEWS OF BOOKS
among other things, the assurance "that man is essentially or generally
good" (p. 209), an assurance Professor Miller apparently derives
from his religious faith, but one he does not otherwise substantiate.
The "broad intellectual foundation for political faith" he has sought
turns out to be decidedly insecure. It is no service to philosophy students or to the general public to pretend that propaganda (no matter
how noble in purpose) is philosophy.
FRANCES
MURPHY
HAMBLIN
Wells College
PHILOSOPHY AND MEDICINE IN ANCIENT GREECE.
With an Edition of IIepL apXal77s L777PLK 'S. (Supplement to the
Bulletin of the History of Medicine, No. 8). By W. H. S. JONES.
Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins Press, I946. Pp. vi, ioo.
In this slim volume a distinguished authority on Greek medicine
offers a revised text of that brief but exceptionally significant Hippocratic treatise, On Ancient Medicine. The Greek text differs in a
number of points from that which Dr. Jones published in the first
volume of his Loeb Hippocrates in I923; and this revised text is accompanied by a new and, in general, more literal English translation.
The text and translation of Ancient Medicine are accompanied by a
brief introduction, summarizing the treatise and discussing questions
of authorship and date. This, in turn, is prefaced by two rather
rambling sections which discuss the medical predecessors of the Hippocratics (the Pythagoreans, Alcmaeon of Croton, the Sicilian School,
etc.) as well as the relation of Hippocratic thought to the speculations
of the early Greek natural philosophers. There is an interesting discussion of the "hypothetical" method elaborated by Plato, for it was
to oppose the intrusion of this method into medical science that Ancient
Medicine, a defense of the physician's already venerable tradition, was
written.
There can be little doubt of the great importance of this little polemic
for the history of medicine. Littre recognized it as one of the few
polished pieces in that collection of seventy-odd crude textbooks, random notes, scrapbooks, and what not - the wreck of a great library that make up the Corpus Hippocraticum. Because he saw that it contained "a la fois une polemique, une methode et un systeme" providing
the best exposition of the underlying principles of Hippocratic medicine, he chose it to introduce his edition of the collected works.
Littre did not doubt that it was the work of the master himself and
felt it to be the most important of the eleven works he took to be
authentic. Modern scholarship is less confident. The historical Hiprenowned physician whom Plato mentions by name,
pocrates -the
the tireless traveler, the close friend of Democritus, the contemporary
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THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW
of Socrates -has
become, as Wilamowitz put it, "a name without
writings." No better evidence than the opinion of Erotian, from the
time of Nero, can be advanced to link this historical name with that
handful of great treatises -Prognostic,
Regimen in Acute Diseases,
and Epidemics I and III - which have manifestly a single authorship,
and which teach a common doctrine. On their part these have become
writings of genius without an author, and are usually spoken of as
Hippocratic, or as by "Hippocrates." Scholars after Littre (with the
outstanding exception of Gompertz) have agreed that Ancient Medicine is Hippocratic in spirit, but not genuine even in the limited sense
just described. Dr. Jones has found no reason to alter his opinion of
I923 that Ancient Medicine, while not genuine, is very old and was
written in the lifetime of the historic Hippocrates, presumably by a
disciple or pupil.
The anonymity of this treatise in no way detracts from its significance in the history of scientific thought. The chief elements of a coherent medical doctrine are clearly set forth, and this doctrine stands
midway between the ideas of Alcmaeon, which are strongly reflected
in Ancient Medicine, and a fully developed humoral theory. The place
of the humors is taken by an indefinite number of simple "opposites,"
not yet restricted in number nor identified with the body fluids. Health
is a harmonious balance (isonomia) or blend (krasis) of these opposites; disease results when this harmony is disturbed and one of the
opposites attains ascendancy.
Such is the positive doctrine accepted, if not systematically expounded, in this treatise. It provided a conceptual framework by which
the considerable body of accumulated observation could be organized.
A largely empirical medicine, with its own body of theory, was therefore already old when Ancient Medicine, which was written to defend
its accomplishments, was set down.
It was necessary just then to defend the traditional medicine against
facile interpretations and gratuitous theories brought in from outside.
It is the importation of the "hypothetical" method into medicine that
our unknown author is condemning. The word "hypothesis," used here
for the first time by an extant Greek writer, signifies an unverifiable
or "empty" postulate, for which "there is no test the application of
which would bring certain knowledge." Such an expedient, the writer
concedes, may have its uses in searching for first principles, studying
transcendental reality, or probing "insoluble mysteries"; but it has
no place in medicine.
Ancient Medicine is not attacking theory as such, nor does it advocate sterile empiricism. The author is not averse to those postulates
which have grown up within medicine, and which were developed by
those who closely observed disease. He does however object to innovators who introduce from natural philosophy postulates subject to no
424
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REVIEWS OF BOOKS
test; who disregard the accumulated experience of medicine; and who
grossly oversimplify by explaining human disease and death by only
one or two causes or principles, "heat or cold, moisture or dryness, or
any other thing they fancy."
Medical theory should not be subordinate to natural philosophy.
This tenet of Ancient Medicine is not only strikingly at variance with
the main lines of Greek thought, especially after Aristotle, but it is
hard to reconcile with the passage in the Phaedrus where Plato attributes to Hippocrates the doctrine that we can know nothing of the
body without a knowledge of natural science. Our author reverses this
argument in a remarkable passage: "For my part, I consider, first,
that all that has been written by scientist or physician about natural
science has less to do with medicine than it has with the art of writing.
Next, I consider that clear knowledge of nature can be derived from
no source except medicine."
What is the meaning of this passage? Is it merely that the microcosm is the proper, because the accessible, key to the macrocosm? Or
is something more fundamental implied? Read in the light of the whole
argument of Ancient Medicine, its preoccupation with method, its
attack on gratuitous theories and the constructions of the natural philosophers, it seems evident that the author is holding up the method
of the medical art as the proper method for the investigation of nature.
The organizing principles of science must not be adduced a priori, but
must emerge (like those of medicine) from a careful study of phenomena. This would make Ancient Medicine not only a fundamental
document in the history of medical empiricism, but a great milestone in
the history of scientific method: the earliest plea for an observational
and inductive method in science, in the manner of the physician, to replace the hypothetical or a priori methods of the ancient philosophers.
HENRY GUERLAC
Department of History, Cornell University
GOD IN US. By A. CAMPBELL
Company, 1945. PP. x, i62.
GARNETT.
Chicago, Willett, Clark &
The author of A Realistic Philosophy of Religion has made another
attempt to support "a liberal Christian philosophy of religion" with an
intellectually sound philosophical framework.
God in Us adopts the point of view that man's inner life supplies
primary data for religious inquiry, in comparison with which all knowledge of nature and history is inferential commentary. More intimate
and trustworthy than that which is known from analyzing the environing world are the immediate data with which the self can confront
itself. God in Us is, first of all, a probing of issues discovered within
the inner sanctum of this self; it is, secondly, a critical analysis of the
425
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