114 Hippocratic Corpus and Diocles of Carystus
atrestoringthe health of a sick body,^43 but rather at bringing about the
least harmful, or least painful, state for a sick body, which may amount
to combating symptoms such as pain^44 or, more generally, to making the
disease more tolerable.
If Celsus is correct in portraying dietetics as a relatively late development
in Greek therapeutics,^45 this must refer to dieteticmedicine, the application
of dietetic principles to the treatment of diseases. Rather than thinking
that dietetics was originally a part of medicine and was only later, under
the influence of changing social and cultural circumstances,^46 divided into
a therapeutic part (the treatment of diseases) and a hygienic part (the
preservation of health and hygiene), one may also defend the view that
dietetics as a way of looking after the body was of an older origin and
had, by the fifth centurybce, developed into an established corpus of
knowledge primarily based on experience which was subsequently applied
to the treatment of diseases.^47
3 the aims of therapeutic activity
With these considerations we are at the heart of what may be called, with the
usualcaveatsand reservations about the diversity the Hippocratic writings
display, ‘Hippocratic medicine’. For the ambivalence just noted – preser-
vation of health, or treatment of disease, or providing palliative care – is, in
a way, characteristic of Hippocratic approaches to health and disease as a
whole. Here the need for terminological clarification makes itself particu-
larly felt, for neither the Greek nor its English derivative ‘therapy’
is specific with regard to this question about the aim(s) to be achieved. This
brings us to a consideration of the terms in which the doctor’s activities are
referred to in the Hippocratic Corpus.
As Nadia van Brock has shown,^48 among the various words used to signify
the doctor’s activity – such as
(‘cure’), -
(‘treat’), +
(‘care’),e (‘help, benefit’),<# (‘remedy, assist’),
(‘care’),
=
(‘treat’),
(‘protect’) – perhaps" 9
(‘set free, release’),H
=
(‘make healthy’), and the passiveH#
(^43) SeeOn Regimen in Acute Diseases 41 ( 2. 310 L.) and 44 ( 2. 316 – 18 L.).
(^44) E.g.On Diseases 3. 16 ( 7. 150 L.): ‘This also stops the pains’ ($ 1 S- -
).
(^45) For other evidence to suggest that this was the case, see Longrigg ( 1999 ).
(^46) On this see Edelstein ( 1967 a) 303 – 16.
(^47) SeeOn Ancient Medicine 7 ( 1. 586 L.): ‘How do these two [i.e. development of a regimen in health
and the use of regimen as treatment of disease] differ, except in that the latter has more different
kinds and is more varied and requires more effort? But the former is the starting-point, and came
before the latter ("% . # 8 ! #).’
(^48) N. van Brock ( 1961 ).