Introduction 11
of their own subject, medical authors such as Galen – who wrote a trea-
tise advocating the view that the best doctor is, or should be, at the
same time a philosopher – and the so-called Anonymus Londiniensis (the
first-centuryceauthor of a medico-doxographical work preserved on pa-
pyrus) treated Plato’s views on the human body and on the origins of
diseases as expounded in theTimaeuson a par with the doctrines of ma-
jor Greek medical writers; and Aristotle and Theophrastus continued to
be regarded as authorities in medicine by medical writers of later antiq-
uity such as Oribasius and Caelius Aurelianus. Conversely, as we shall
see in chapter 6 , a philosopher such as Aristotle commented favourably
on the contributions by ‘the more distinguished doctors’ to the area
of ‘natural philosophy’. And in the doxographical tradition of ‘A ̈etius’,
in the context of ‘physics’ or ‘natural philosophy’, a number of medi-
cal writers such as Diocles, Herophilus, Erasistratus and Asclepiades are
cited alongside ‘philosophers’ such as Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics for their
views on such topics as change, the soul, the location of the ruling part of the
soul (see chapter 4 ), dreams, respiration, monstrosities, fertility and sterility,
twins and triplets, the status of the embryo, mules, seventh-month children,
embryonic development, and the causes of old age, disease and fever.^19
The subtitle of this volume, ‘nature, soul, health and disease’ indicates
some of the more prominent areas in which such interaction between
‘philosophers’ and medical writers was most clearly visible. It is no co-
incidence that Aristotle’s comments on the overlap between ‘students of
nature’ and ‘doctors’ are made in his ownParva naturalia,a series of works
on a range of psycho-physiological topics – sense-perception, memory,
sleep, dreams, longevity, youth and old age, respiration, life and death,
health and disease – that became the common ground of medical writers
and philosophers alike. And, not surprisingly, Aristotle makes similar re-
marks in his zoological works concerning questions of anatomy, such as the
parts of the body and structures like the vascular system, and embryology,
especially the question of the origins of life, the mechanisms of repro-
duction and the ways in which inherited features are passed on from one
generation to another, the question of the male and female contribution
to the reproductive process, the origin of the semen, questions of fertility
and infertility (see chapter 9 ), stages of embryonic development, the way
the embryo is nourished, twins and triplets, and suchlike. This whole area
was referred to in later antiquity as ‘the nature of man’, particularly man’s
physical make-up, ranging from the lowest, most basic level of ‘principles’
(^19) See Runia ( 1999 ).