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It is common for persons in different disciplines to learn from one another. Though one may not have the necessary skills and resources for conducting proper scholarly inquiries in another's discipline, one may yet uncover material of great interest there.¹ So it is when the philosopher of medicine makes use of historical studies. It is always a hazardous matter when a philosopher transgresses disciplinary boundaries in this fashion. The hazard is doubled if he seeks to draw analogies between ancient and contemporary developments, given the radically different social and intellectual contexts in which these developments unfolded. Nonetheless, in a volume largely devoted to contemporary visions of the medical body — Cartesian, phenomenological, sociopolitical, and the like — I think there is some value to reflecting on the ancient roots of Western medicine, and noting that themes of currently hot debate have themselves had a long history. In the conflicts of the ancient schools we see questions raised which still are with us — the importance of generality and classification within medicine versus attention to the individuality of the patient; the bodily interior as the locus and cause of disease versus disease as arising in the interaction of self and world; the doctor's experience as determinative of the medical encounter versus that of the patient, etc. I have tried neither to write an in-depth historical treatise, nor to develop fully the philosophical ramifications of these ancient debates. The former is beyond the scope of my training, the latter, beyond the scope of this work. Nevertheless, I hope what I here present will be suggestive to readers of this volume, and place some of its other articles in a broader context of cultural history. Given this limited aim, I am hopeful that my brief introduction to ancient medicine and its diverse views of the body will not unleash too harsh a critique from those more expert than I in the subtle, though always enchanting, entanglements of historical matters.²

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-015-7924-7_7

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