Philosophy and Medicine in Antiquity

Abstract

Throughout antiquity the relation between philosophy and medicine was very close. The author of “Decorum” gave the advice to carry philosophy into medicine and medicine into philosophy (chap. 5). Obviously the advice was heeded by many doctors and philosophers. Burnet (Early Greek Philosophy, p. 201, n. 4) went so far as to claim that from the times of Empedocles onwards “it is impossible to understand the history of philosophy ... without keeping the history of medicine constantly in view.” And as far as medicine is concerned, it is generally agreed, and indeed obvious, that ancient medical authors, from the Hippocratic writers onwards, heavily relied on philosophers, not just for their views on physiology, but also for their conception of their art and their moral precepts for the doctor. But often they also formed fairly detailed philosophical views of their own. In fact, there is a whole tradition of philosophical thought in ancient medicine, particularly concerning the nature of medical knowledge, which is fairly independent of the thought of the philosophers, and which was substantial enough to at times even influence the views of the philosophers.