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This work brings together Philip van der Eijk's previously published essays on the close connections that existed between medicine and philosophy throughout antiquity. Medical authors such as the Hippocratic writers, Diocles, Galen, Soranus and Caelius Aurelianus elaborated on philosophical methods such as causal explanation, definition and division and applied key concepts such as the notion of nature to their understanding of the human body. Similarly, philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle were highly valued for their contributions to medicine. This interaction was particularly striking in the study of the human soul in its relation to the body, as illustrated by approaches to specific topics such as intellect, sleep and dreams, and diet and drugs. With a detailed introduction surveying the subject as a whole and an essay on Aristotle's treatment of sleep, this wide-ranging and accessible collection is essential reading for the student of ancient philosophy and science.
Diocles of Carystus (4th century BCE), also known as "the younger Hippocrates", was one of the most prominent medical authorities in antiquity. He wrote extensively on a wide range of areas such as anatomy, physiology, pathology, therapeutics, embryology, gynaecology, dietetics, foods and poisons. In his writings, he betrays strong philosophical influence, and his views present striking connections with the Hippocratic Corpus, Plato, Aristotle and Theophrastus. The study of Diocles' ideas has long been hampered by the absence of a reliable collection of the remaining evidence. This book presents and discusses all the fragments and testimonies to Diocles' views. The first volume presents the Greek, Latin and Arabic sources with facing English translation. The second volume (publication April 2001) provides a commentary on the fragments and places them in their intellectual context.
This collection of essays focuses on the ways in which Greek and Latin authors viewed and wrote about the history of medicine in the ancient world. Special attention is given to medical doxography, i.e. the description of the characteristic doctrines of the great medical authorities of the past. The volume examines the various attitudes to the history of medicine adopted by a wide range of ancient writers (e.g. Aristotle, Galen, Celsus, Herophilus, Soranus, Oribasius, Caelius Aurelianus). It discusses the historical sense of ancient medicine, the variety of versions of the medical past that were created and the wide range of purposes and strategies which medico-historical writing served. It also deals with the question of the sources, the role of historiographical traditions and the variety of literary genres of ancient medico-historical writing.
This text by Philoponus, the sixth-century commentator on Aristotle, is notable for its informative introduction to psychology, which tells us the views of Philoponus, of his teacher and of later Neoplatonists on our psychological capacities and on mind-body relations. There is an unusual account of how reason can infer a universally valid conclusion from a single instance, and there are inherited views on the roles of intellect and perception in concept formation, and on the human ability to make reasoned decisions, celebrated by Aristotle, but here downgraded. Philoponus attacks Galen's view that psychological capacities follow, or result from, bodily chemistry; they merely supervene on that and can be counteracted. He has benefited from Galen's knowledge of the brain and nerves, but also propounds the Neoplatonist belief in tenuous bodies which after death support our irrational souls temporarily, or our reason eternally.
What expectations did the women and men living in early monastic communities carry into relationships of obedience and advice? What did they hope to achieve through confession and discipline? To explore these questions, this study shows how several early Christian writers applied the logic, knowledge, and practices of Galenic medicine to develop their own practices of spiritual direction. Evagrius reads dream images as diagnostic indicators of the soul's state. John Cassian crafts a nosology of the soul using lists of passions while diagnosing the causes of wet dreams. Basil of Caesarea pits the spiritual director against the physician in a competition over diagnostic expertise. John Climacus crafts pathologies of passions through demonic family trees, while equipping his spiritual director with a physician's toolkit and imagining the monastic space as a vast clinic. These different appropriations of medical logic and metaphors not only show us the thought-world of late antique monasticism, but they would also have decisive consequences for generations of Christian subjects who would learn to see themselves as sick or well, patients or healers, within monastic communities.
The gospel of Mark purposefully employs characters with specific and nuanced representations of dis/ability to portray the unique authority, the engaging message, and the mission of the Markan Jesus. Based on hermeneutical insights from Dis/ability Studies, this monograph is a contribution to the research of culturally and historically normalized corporeality in the biblical scriptures. At the core of the investigation are the healing narratives: passages that explicitly deal with a transformation from a described deviant bodily state to a positively valued corporeality. Lena Nogossek-Raithel not only analyzes the terminological and historical descriptions of these physical phenomena but also investigates their narrative function for the gospel text. The author argues that the images of dis/ability employed are far from accidental. Rather, they significantly influence the narrative’s structure and impact, embody its theological claims, and characterize its protagonist Jesus. With this thorough exegetical analysis, Nogossek-Raithel offers a firm historical foundation for anyone interested in the critical interpretation and theological application of the Markan healing narratives.
Mixtures is of central importance for Galen's views on the human body. It presents his influential typology of the human organism according to nine mixtures (or 'temperaments') of hot, cold, dry and wet. It also develops Galen's ideal of the 'well-tempered' person, whose perfect balance ensures excellent performance both physically and psychologically. Mixtures teaches the aspiring doctor how to assess the patient's mixture by training one's sense of touch and by a sophisticated use of diagnostic indicators. It presents a therapeutic regime based on the interaction between foods, drinks, drugs and the body's mixture. Mixtures is a work of natural philosophy as well as medicine. It acknowledges Aristotle's profound influence whilst engaging with Hippocratic ideas on health and nutrition, and with Stoic, Pneumatist and Peripatetic physics. It appears here in a new translation, with generous annotation, introduction and glossaries elucidating the argument and setting the work in its intellectual context.
Diocles of Carystus (4th century BCE), also known as "the younger Hippocrates", was one of the most prominent medical authorities in antiquity. He wrote extensively on a wide range of areas such as anatomy, physiology, pathology, therapeutics, embryology, gynaecology, dietetics, foods and poisons. In his writings, he betrays strong philosophical influence, and his views present striking connections with the Hippocratic Corpus, Plato, Aristotle and Theophrastus. The study of Diocles' ideas has long been hampered by the absence of a reliable collection of the remaining evidence. This book presents and discusses all the fragments and testimonies to Diocles' views. Following on from the first volume, which presented the Greek, Latin and Arabic sources with facing English translation, the second volume provides a commentary on the fragments and places them in their intellectual context.
Until the launch of this series over fifteen years ago, the 15,000 volumes of the ancient Greek commentators on Aristotle, written mainly between 200 and 600 AD, constituted the largest corpus of extant Greek philosophical writings not translated into English or other European languages. This text by Philoponus rejects accounts of soul, or as we would say of mind, which define it as moving, as cognitive, or in physical terms. Chapter 3 considers Aristotle's attack on the idea that the soul is in motion. This was an attack partly on his teacher, Plato, since Plato defines the soul as self-moving. Philoponus agrees with Aristotle's attack on the idea that a thing must be in motion in order to ...
Originally published: London: Gerald Duckworth & Co., Ltd., 2005.