Abstract

This dissertation is a study of the Hippocratic treatise On Ancient Medicine , focusing on the author's conception of t3&d12;cn h . In their attempts to place traditional medical practice on a systematic, rational foundation, the early medical writers whose works are preserved in the Hippocratic Corpus developed the idea of t3&d12;cn h as a systematic body of procedures for preserving health and curing disease. The author of VM attacks thinkers who tried to provide such a systematic method for medicine by reducing it to the interaction of a very small number of factors such as hot, cold, wet, and dry, factors the author calls u&d13;poq 3&d12;s3iv . In Chapter One I argue that, although the author rejects his opponents' claim that medicine must be based on such u&d13;poq 3&d12;s3iv to be systematic, he agrees with them that medicine needs a systematic method in order to qualify as a t3&d12;cn h . To show that medicine has such a method he gives an account of how it was discovered by observing the reactions of different individuals to different foods over a long period of time. This procedure ultimately led to the discovery of a body of knowledge of human nature that can explain and guide medical practice. The author makes out a good case that his theory, according to which human beings are made up of a vast number of different humors in a state of "blending" or krh&d5;s iv , is a better framework for explaining and guiding treatment than his opponents' rigid systematization in terms of the u&d13;poq 3&d12;s3iv hot, cold, wet, and dry. In Chapter Two, I examine the argument the author makes against a second group of opponents in chapters 20--24 of VM; analysis of this argument confirms that he held theoretical knowledge of human fu&d12;si v to be necessary to explain and guide treatment. In Chapter Three, I examine the author's argument that "ancient" medicine possessed the quality of a&d12;kr i&d12;b3ia , exactness or precision. In the Conclusion I suggest that the fact that the author's motivation was not an epistemological one was an advantage that enabled him to avoid both the excessive schematism characteristic of his opponents' theories and the scientifically sterile path taken by the Empiricist doctors of the Hellenistic period, who rejected all theory as irrelevant to medical practice on epistemological grounds.