Philip J van der Eijk (ed.), Hippocrates in context: papers read at the XIth International Hippocrates Colloquium, University of Newcastle upon Tyne 27–31 August 2002, Studies in Ancient Medicine, vol. 31, Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2005, pp. xvi, 521, €149.00, US$199.00 (hardback 90-04-14430-7).

Abstract

The XIth International Hippocrates Colloquium focused on the contexts in which the Hippocratic texts were written and read. The organiser, Philip van der Eijk, chose this broad theme in order to encourage contributions from a wide range of disciplines. The proceedings, divided into five sections, open with a study of the notion of cause in the contemporary works of historians (Thucydides and Herodotus) and medical writers by Jacques Jouanna, who usefully reminds the reader that comparisons across genres should not always be conceived in simplistic terms of influences. The remainder of the first section, devoted to the epistemological context of Hippocratic medicine, is heavily centred on the much-studied treatise On ancient medicine, although Daniela Fausti examines some more neglected texts in her study of the use of signs in prognostication. The second section, exploring the social context of Hippocratic medicine, includes some of the most innovative essays of the volume. Maria Elena Gorrini offers an impressive study of the archaeological evidence for healing cults in Attica. She stresses that these cults developed contemporaneously with ‘Hippocratic medicine’, often used the same methods of healing, and were not in strict opposition—she shows how medical doctors made dedications to the God Asclepius. Julie Laskaris also investigates the links between religious and Hippocratic medicine, focusing on the use of excrements and kourotrophic milk (the milk of a woman who has borne a male child) in the Hippocratic gynaecological recipes. She suggests that the use of kourotrophic milk shows the influence of Egyptian medicine, which made use of the milk of the Goddess Isis feeding her son Horus. In incorporating that ingredient in their pharmacopoeia, the Greeks misunderstood or ignored the Egyptian ritual connotations of kourotrophic milk. Finally, in her contribution on the largely unknown treatise On the organ of sight, Elizabeth Craik ventures the hypothesis that this text was composed by someone whose first language was not Greek, maybe someone from Egypt. The third section explores the links between “Hippocratic” and “non-Hippocratic” medicine, that is, the medicine expounded in the writings of inter alia Aristotle (Frederic le Blay), the Anonymus Londinensis (Daniela Manetti), and Theophrastus (Armelle Debru). The fourth section, devoted to the linguistic and rhetorical context of Hippocratic medicine, is—unfortunately—the shortest. Detailed linguistic and literary studies can yield important information on the socio-cultural context in which the Hippocratic texts were produced, as shown most prominently by Tim Stover's study of discursive practices and structural features exploited in Prorrhetic 2. Through the use of particular rhetorical features, the author of Prorrhetic 2 produced a protreptic text destined to win over a clientele of pupils in the context of competition between medical practitioners. The final section, focusing on the later reception of Hippocratic medicine, opens with a study of the medical papyri from the Egyptian village of Tebtunis by Ann Hanson, and is followed by essays on the reception of Hippocratic theories by later medical authors, such as Celsus (Muriel Pardon), Aretaeus (Amneris Roselli), and Galen (Ivan Garofalo). The division of the proceedings into sections is at times artificial, and it is regrettable that the section on the epistemological context is so centred on On ancient medicine; but altogether this volume testifies to the very positive evolution of Hippocratic scholarship in recent years. Hippocratic scholars are no longer afraid to use archaeological and papyrological evidence; they study linguistic features in innovative ways; they do not shy away from neglected texts such as Prorrhetic 2, Internal affections and On the organ of sight (as shown by the index of passages cited); and they fully embrace the possibility that Greek medicine was influenced by Egyptian medicine. In short, Hippocratic scholarship has truly become interdisciplinary.