HIST 449 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Analogy, Teleology, Erasistratus
9 Jun 2018
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HIST 449- Feb 8
The Hellenistic Medical World Continued
Heophilus body
• Aristotle transformed the body into the Hippocratic body as container of
fluids into a rationally ordered and coherently functioning system of
structures, Heophilus took this to the next level
• A thorough going teleologist, 3 kinds of vessel, 3 kinds of functions
• The body dynamic : faculties or innate capabilities governing functions by
attracting/pulling various liquids, solids, and airs through the duct work of
the body to their intended destinations.
• The body in miniature: nerves and blood vessels
• The body quantified: the pulse
• Pulse: clinical manifestation of pneuma
• Link between pulse and fveer
• Analytic grid: speed, rhythmc, strength
• Pulse and musical theory
Erasistratus
• Epistemikon (anatomy, physiology, etiology) and stochastikon (diagnostis,
prognostics, therapeutics
• Hylai= primal materials for life (blood and pneuma)
• Triplokia a mechanism for distributing nutriment and pneuma that
intensifies strength by interweaving vessels
Medical Sects and Methodism
What is a sect?
• A group which accepts leadership and follows a set of teachings by deliberate
choice
• Internal solidary reinforced by external polemics and debates
• Terms later acquired a pejorative meaning
What rationalists know
• True causes of disease can only be grasped through reason. They are rooted
in the bodys basic constitution which in turn is interwoven with
circumstances of environment
• Evident causes are not the same as true causes
• Reason, based on experimentation and anatomy, can solve all the problems
of physiology, disease identification and therapy
• Treatment is derived by conjecture fro hidden causes, but experience and
experiment also play a role
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