Leonid Zhmud The Origin of the History of Science in Classical Antiquity

part of his conception of medicine as a profession. It is the history of medicine
that proves the medical art to possess every quality that makes it a proper
técnh. Since he is familiar with the principal intellectual trends of his time, the
author of
VM manages to show us the attitude of his contemporaries toward
cognitive activity and scientific progress, the way they accounted for the origin
of técnai and the growth of knowledge, and the significance they attached to
the scientific method.
He begins his work with criticism of the natural philosophers who regard
health as dependent on the excess of a certain quality (cold, hot, etc.). Such the-
41
The significant role of lawgiving in Isocrates reminds us of Protagoras’ politik3
técnh (Pl. Prot. 322f.). Cf. also Critias (88 B 25.5f.).
42
See e.g.
De arte 1, 4. Also important were the polemics among the physicians them-
selves: Ducatillon, J.
Polémiques dans la Collection hippocratique, Lille 1977, 96f.
43
On the whole, I follow the text and the interpretations of Jouanna, J.
Hippocrate.
L’ancienne médicine, Paris 1990. See also Wanner, H. Studien zu perì @rcaíh~ ıa-
trik4~ (Diss.), Zurich 1939; Hippocrate. L’ancienne médicine, ed. by A.-J. Festu-
gière, Paris 1948.

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2. The theory of the origin of medicine
55
ories, he believes, introduce into medicine unverifiable hypotheses of their
own, ignoring the results medicine has already achieved independently.
But medicine has long had all its means to hand, and has discovered both a prin-
ciple and a method, through which the discoveries made during a long period are
many and excellent, while full discovery will be made, if the discoverer be com-
petent, conduct his researches with knowledge of the discoveries already made,
and make them his starting-point. But anyone who, casting aside and rejecting all
these means, attempts to conduct research in any other way or after another
fashion, and asserts that he has found out anything, is and has been the victim of
deception. His assertion is impossible (2).
44
It is significant that the verb eûrískein and its derivatives occur five times in
this passage alone. In the whole of the treatise, comprising about twenty pages,
the word eûrískein is used twenty-three times, the word ëxeurískein five
times, and the noun eÛrhma three times. For the Hippocratic corpus, such fre-
quent use is unique.
45
It is revealing also that the verb zhte$n, which forms part
of the well-known pair of notions z2thsi~–eÛresi~, occurs in this work seven
times, along with the noun z2thma, which is not found elsewhere in the Hip-
pocratic corpus.
The author of
VM is not only enthusiastic about the progress in investi-
gations and discoveries that are enriching medicine with new knowledge,
46
but
also believes medicine as a whole to be a human discovery (oî dè zht2santé~
te kaì eûrónte~ ıhtrik2n, 5). Identifying medicine with dietetics, he claims
that, since the food, drinks, and very way of life of the healthy do not suit the
sick, people, driven by this necessity (@nágkh) and need (creía), started to
seek medicine and discovered it. It is not the need itself, however, that led to the
discovery of medicine. Those who first discovered it (oî prõtoi eûrónte~)
pursued their inquiries with suitable application of reason to the nature of man
(14). To this end, they employed the only true method (ôdó~), which consists in
finding the nourishment, the drink, and the mode of life that suits the nature of a
sick person (cf.
De arte, 13). It is the knowledge of all this that makes medicine
(3). The same method had been used before, with a view to the nature of the
healthy person. Before the nourishment proper for human nature was discover-
ed, people used to live like wild beasts. They ate fruit, grass, and hay, suffered
cruelly from it, often got sick and soon died. “For this reason the ancients too
seem to me to have sought for nourishment that harmonized with their consti-
tutions, and to have discovered that which we use now.” (3) Thus, the author
identifies the transition from the savage state to civilization with the discovery
44
The translation of the