36 Medicine and Philosophy in Classical Antiquity
Ancient Medicine^48 and the author ofOn Diseases 1 , who seems to refer
to a similar situation of public question and answer on medicine.^49 It is
by no means inconceivable that some of the medical works preserved in
the Hippocratic Corpus were actually delivered orally for a predominantly
non-specialist audience, some possibly in the setting of a rhetorical contest;
and it is quite possible that, for example,On the Sacred Diseasewas among
this group too. Such a situation is almost certainly envisaged by the au-
thors of the two rhetorically most elaborate works preserved in the Corpus,
the already mentionedOn the Art of MedicineandOn Breaths, in which
Gorgianic figures of speech and sound effects abound, such as parallelism,
antithesis and anaphora.^50 As mentioned above, it has long been doubted
whether these works were actually written by doctors; yet their style and
character fit in very well with the competitive setting of ancient medicine
referred to earlier, and they are apparently aimed at self-definition and self-
assertion of a discipline whose scientific nature (techn ̄e) was not beyond
dispute.
However, the oral transmission of medical knowledge not only served the
purpose of self-presentation to a larger, non-specialised audience, but also
had a didactic, educational justification: medicine being the practical art
it naturally is, the importance of oral teaching and direct contact between
the teacher and the pupil is repeatedly stressed. Thus both Aristotle and
his medical contemporary Diocles of Carystus acknowledge the usefulness
of written knowledge for the medical profession, but they emphasise that
(^48) The author ofOn Ancient Medicinebegins his work by referring to ‘all who have attemptedto speak or
to writeon medicine and who have assumed for themselves a postulate as a basis for their discussion’
( 1. 1 , 1. 570 L.); and later on, in ch. 20 of the same work, he expresses his disdain for ‘whatever has
beensaid or written downby a sophist or a doctor about nature’ ( 20. 2 , 1. 622 L.). Likewise, the author
ofOn the Nature of Manrefers to an audience ‘used tolistening to people who speakabout the nature
of man beyond what is relevant for medicine’ (ch. 1 , 6. 32 L.); and further on in the same chapter he
describes how the people referred to are engaged in a rhetorical contest in which they try to gain the
upper hand in front of an audience: ‘The best way to realise this is to be present at their debates.
Given the same debaters and the same audience, the same man never wins in the discussion three
times in succession, but now one is victor, now another, now he who happens to have the most glib
tongue in the face of the crowd. Yet it is right that a man who claims correct knowledge about the
facts should maintain his own argument victorious always, if his knowledge be knowledge of reality
and if he set it forth correctly. But in my opinion such men by their lack of understanding overthrow
themselves in the words of their very discussions, and establish the theory of Melissus’ ( 6. 34 L., tr.
Jones in Jones and Withington ( 1923 – 31 ) vol.iv, 5 ).
(^49) ‘Anyone who wishes to ask correctly about healing, and, on being asked, to reply and rebut correctly,
must consider the following... When you have considered these questions, you must pay careful
attention in discussions, and when someone makes an error in one of these points in his assertions,
questions, or answers... then you must catch him there and attack him in your rebuttal’,On Diseases
- 1 ( 6. 140 – 2 L., tr. Potter ( 1988 ) vol.v, 99 – 101 ).
(^50) A comprehensive account of these stylistic devices can be found in Jouanna’s edition of the two
works; Jouanna ( 1988 a) 10 – 24 and 169 – 73.