290 Late antiquity
most of the qualifications can be reduced, is to distinguish essential ( ’
H!) from accidental (1 < <#!) factors. Some distinctions con-
cern variations between different substances, but several may apply to one
and the same substance, or occur with different species of one and the same
substance.
Hence we may say that there is a keen awareness, on Galen’s part, of
the fact that the outcome of an empirical test of a certain substance’s effect
depends to a very high degree on the conditions under which it is applied.
In a number of cases we can see Galen actually defining these conditions
on the basis of a set ofdiorismoi, qualifications or distinctions that are to be
taken into account, and on the basis of a knowledge of which conditions
are relevant and which are not. Only by taking the relevant qualifications
into account can one arrive at a correct generalstatement( !) about the
power of a particular substance.^45
As for the relation of ‘qualified experience’ to reason and experience, it
is interesting to note that Galen, as already stated, presents the notion in
opposition both to ‘reason’ ( !)^46 and to ‘experience without reason’.^47
This can be well understood when considering the qualifications that I have
just enumerated. Some of thesediorismoican be accepted as observable:
for example, we can simplyobservethat in summer the effects of a given
drug are different from those brought about when it is administered in
winter, or that a certain drug is beneficial to younger people but harmful to
older people, and we may conclude from this that these distinctions are the
relevant determining factors (although it may be objected that their actually
having a causative influence is, strictly speaking, not observable). Yet there
are also determining factors which do not admit of being observed, at least
not in a straightforward sense. This is especially the case with physiological
states and processes of the kind referred to in the chapter ofOn the Powers
of Foodstuffs(such as a, a ‘bad mixture’ of humours, a particular
state of the bowels or the stomach, etc.). The existence or occurrence of
these,and their actually being a conditioning factor,is – as Galen himself
acknowledges without any misgivings^48 – to be theoretically postulated,
or to be inferred on the basis of symptoms, such as the occurrence of a
(^45) For examples of such statements see n. 65 below. (^46) See n. 17 above.
(^47) De alim. facult. 1. 1. 7 (CMGv4, 2 ,p. 204. 6 – 9 Helmreich, 6. 458 K.); see also next note.
(^48) De alim. facult. 1. 1. 44 (CMGv4, 2 ,p. 215. 21 – 3 Helmreich, 6. 478 K.): ‘For in general it is not possible
to test anything properly by experience without first discovering accurately by means of reason the
condition of the body to which the food or drug that is being tested is applied’ ( ) 1 (.
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