Main description:

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.

Contents:

Acknowledgements; Note on translations; Note on abbreviations; Introduction; Part I. Hippocratic Corpus and Diocles of Carystus: 1. The 'theology' of the Hippocratic treatise On the Sacred Disease; 2. Diocles and the Hippocratic writings on the method of dietetics and the limits of causal explanation; 3. To help, or to do no harm: principles and practices of therapeutics in the Hippocratic Corpus and in the work of Diocles of Carystus; 4. The heart, the brain, the blood and the pneuma: Hippocrates, Diocles and Aristotle on the location of cognitive processes; Part II. Aristotle and His School: 5. Aristotle on melancholy; 6. Theoretical and empirical elements in Aristotle's treatment of sleep, dreams and divination in sleep; 7. The matter of mind: Aristotle on the biology of 'psychic' processes and the bodily aspects of thinking; 8. Divine movement and human nature in Eudemian Ethics 8.2; 9. On sterility ('Hist. an. 10'), a medical work by Aristotle?; Part III. Late Antiquity: 10. Galen's use of the concept of 'qualified experience' in his dietetic and pharmacological works; 11. The Methodism of Caelius Aurelianus: some epistemological issues; Bibliography; Index of passages cited; General index.