[p. 5]
Littré may have shown that there is a resemblance
to our author in the Phaedrus passage. Resemblances,
however, show merely that the writer was
Hippocratic, not that he was Hippocrates.
The reference, in Chapter XV, to participation
(κοιννωεῖι) in εἴδη and to "absolute existences" (αὐτό
τι ἐΦ' ἑωυτοῦ) might lead a critic to infer that the
writer lived in the age of Plato. But there are two
insuperable difficulties to this hypothesis. One is
that in Chapter XX the word σοΦιστήσ2 is used in its
early sense of "philosopher," which implies that
the writer lived before Plato attached to the word
the dishonourable meaning it has in later Greek.
The other is that the writer attacks the intrusion of
philosophic speculation into the science of medicine,
and the speculation he has constantly in mind, as
being, apparently, the most influential in his day, is
that of Empedocles,
Or possibly that of the Milesian school with its
doctrine of
opposites, of which opposites the Empedoclean "roots" are
four, definitely corporealised. |
who is actually mentioned in
Chapter XX as a typical writer περὶ Φύς1εωσ2. There is
a sentence in Chapter XIV which closely resembles,
in both thought and diction, the fragments of Anaxagoras.
It certainly looks as though the writer of
Ancient Medicine was not unfamiliar with the works
of this philosopher. All this evidence tends to fix
the date as approximately 430-420 B.C., and to
suggest as the writer either Hippocrates or a very
capable supporter of the medical school of which
Hippocrates was a contemporary member.
The author of Ancient Medicine in Chapter II asserts