To help, or to do no harm 105
medicine were incomplete and impotent. ( 10 ) After these, Serapion was the first
to claim that this theoretical discipline had no bearing on medicine at all and that
it [i.e. medicine] was a matter of practice and experience only. He was followed by
Apollonius, Glaucias, and some time later by Heraclides of Tarentum and several
other very distinguished men, who on the strength of the very claim they made
gave themselves the name of Empiricists. ( 11 ) Thus that part of medicine which
heals by regimen was also divided into two parts, some claiming for themselves
that it was a theoretical art, others that it was a matter of practice only. After those
who have just been dealt with, however, no one indeed added anything to what
he had accepted from his precursors until Asclepiades made major changes to the
method of healing.
Four brief comments on this passage are in order here:
(i) The art of medicine as practised by Hippocrates is presented by Celsus
in a rather narrow sense of the art of healing (curare), namely treatment
or therapy, which raises the question what place, if any, is left for
anatomy, physiology, prognostics and pathology – areas which are
well represented in the Hippocratic Corpus.
(ii) Progress in this art is said to have led to a differentiation of modes
of treatment (in diuersas curandi uias) which occurred shortlyafter
Hippocrates ( 8 ).
(iii) It is said ( 9 ) that ‘in the same times’ a tripartition of medicine oc-
curred. It is unclear, however, what Celsus means by ‘the same times’,
and whether this tripartition is identical to, or a consequence of,
the differentiation mentioned in the previous sentence, or in other
words, how the sentencesPost quem... processerintandisdemque tem-
poribus... nominaruntare related to one another.
(iv) The renewal of interest in the theoretical study of nature as well as
the subsequent criticism this provoked among the Empiricists ( 9 – 11 )
is said to have taken place within the specific area of dietetics, which
in its turn, and as a result of this development, was divided into two
branches.
I shall be brief about point (i), for it may be, and often has been, argued
that this perception of Hippocratic medicine reflects, to a much greater
extent than the other three points, Celsus’ personal view of the priorities
in medicine.^8 Yet in at least one respect the surviving evidence does seem
to agree with the picture he presents. The Hippocratic Corpus provides
evidence of an increasingly self-conscious medical profession, which is re-
flecting on and promulgating its own principles, setting high standards
(^8) On Celsus as a reporter of Rationalist medicine see von Staden ( 1994 b); on Celsus’ view of Hippocrates
see Serbat ( 1995 ) liii–lvii; Mudry ( 1977 ) 345 – 52 ; Castiglioni ( 1940 ) 862 – 6.