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Hippocratic Bodily “Channels” and Oriental Parallels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2012

E M Craik
E M Craik
Affiliation:
Professor E M Craik, School of Classics, University of St Andrews, St Andrews KY16 9AL, UK; and Classics, School of Historical Studies, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK.
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Information
Medical History , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , January 2009 , pp. 105 - 116
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2009. Published by Cambridge University Press

References

1References are given by chapter numbers, with the addition in square brackets of volume and page numbers in E Littré, Oeuvres complètes d'Hippocrate, 10 vols, Paris, J-B Baillière, 1839–61, the standard Greek text with French translation of the complete corpus. The most accessible English translation—available for most, though not all, Hippocratic works—is in the eight volumes of the Loeb Classical Library (by different scholars), Cambridge, MA, and London, Harvard University Press, 1923–95.

2See the assumptions made in the title and throughout by Francis Adams (transl.), The genuine works of Hippocrates, 2 vols, London, Sydenham Society, 1849, and contrast the stance of Vivian Nutton, Ancient medicine, London, Routledge, 2004, pp. 53–71.

3Anargyros Anastassiou and Dieter Irmer (eds), Testimonien zum Corpus Hippocraticum, Teil I: Nachleben der hippokratischen Schriften, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006.

4Ilza Veith, Huang Ti Nei Ching Su Wen: the Yellow Emperor's classic of internal medicine, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1949; Nathan Sivin, Traditional medicine in contemporary China, Ann Arbor, Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1987; and Liu Yanchi, The essential book of traditional Chinese medicine, New York, Columbia University Press, 1988.

5The work of G E R Lloyd, paradigmatic in such comparative study, is much more wide-ranging in scope than this paper.

6On Diogenes of Apollonia, see G E R Lloyd, ‘Diogenes of Apollonia: master of ducts’, in Maria Michaela Sassi (ed.), La costruzione del discorso filosofico nell'eta` dei presocratici, Pisa, Edizioni della Normale, 2006, especially at p. 254, on the general disregard by early Greek thinkers of the “usual intellectual boundaries” in the service of psychological, philosophical or other theories.

7Homer, Iliad, 13. 545–7 (my translations throughout).

8Aristotle, History of animals, 513b 27–28.

9See Charles V Daremberg, La médecine dans Homère, Paris, Didier, 1865 (jugular); Otto Körner, Die aerztlichen Kenntnisse in Ilias und Odyssee, Munich, Bergmann, 1929 (aorta with carotid, or vena cava with jugular); Wolf-Hartmut H Friedrich Verwundung und Tod in der Ilias, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1956 (“Scheinrealismus”); Fridolf Kudlien, ‘Zum Thema “Homer und die Medizin”’, Rheinisches Museum, 1965, 108: 293–9 (persuaded by Aristotle); see also A H M Kerkhoff, ‘Ein anatomicum bei Homer’, Rheinisches Museum, 1981, 124: 193–5.

10See Kudlien, op. cit., note 9 above, pp. 295–9.

11Thus Richard Janko, The Iliad: a commentary, vol. 4, bks 13–16, Cambridge University Press, 1992, ad loc. correctly annotates “ … surely the spinal chord …”.

12Homer, Iliad, 20. 481–3.

13Thus Mark W Edwards, The Iliad: a commentary, vol. 5, bks 17–20, Cambridge University Press, 1991, ad loc. cursorily annotates “anatomically impossible”.

14Homer, Iliad, 13. 546.

15Homer, Iliad, 20. 483.

16Henry G Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek–English lexicon, Oxford, Clarendon Press, many editions, s.v.; Edwards, op. cit., note 13 above, ad loc.

17Homer, Iliad, 5. 584–6. G S Kirk, The Iliad: a commentary, vol. 2, books 5–8, Cambridge University Press, 1990, ad loc. regards this encounter as a “pure flight of fancy”.

18Carn. 4 [Littré, 8. 588]. For a fuller discussion of the anatomy of the spine, see E M Craik, ‘Myelos: matters of life and death’, Acta Classica Supplement II, Asklepios: studies on ancient medicine, ed. L. Cilliers, Blomfontein, 2008, pp. 64–73.

19Oss. 1–7 [Littré, 9. 168–74]; Oss. 11–18 [Littré, 9. 182–94]; Galen, Opera omnia, ed. with Latin transl. C G Kühn, 20 vols, Leipzig, C Cnobloch, 1821–30, Linguarum seu dictionum exoletarum Hippocratis explicatio, 19. 128.

20Oss. 8 [Littré, 9. 174]; Aristotle, History of animals, 511b 24–30.

21Oss. 9 [Littré, 9. 174–8]; Nat. Hom. 11 [Littré, 6. 58].

22Oss. 10 [Littré, 9. 178–80]; Epid. 2. 4. 1 [Littré, 5. 120–24].

23Cf. G E R Lloyd, Polarity and analogy: two types of argumentation in early Greek thought, Cambridge University Press, 1966, esp. pp. 15–85.

24Oss. 11–18 [Littré, 9. 182–94].

25See C R S Harris, The heart and the vascular system in ancient Greek medicine, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1973, pp. 50–73. See also M-P Duminil, Hippocrate, vol. 8: Plaies, nature des os, coeur, anatomie, Paris, Belles Lettres, 1998, esp. pp. 149–58.

26Oss. 12 [Littré, 9. 182].

27Loc. Hom. 3 [Littré, 6. 280].

28See He Zhiguo and Vivienne Lo, ‘The channels: a preliminary examination of a lacquered figurine from the Western Han period’, Early China, 1996, 21: 81–23; Vivienne Lo, ‘Spirits of stone: technical considerations in the treatment of the Jade body’, Bulletin of SOAS, 2002, 65: 99–128.

29Oss. 9 [Littré, 9. 174-8]; Nat. Hom. 11 [Littré, 6. 58].

30Cf. Nutton, op. cit., note 2 above, p. 241.

31Loc. Hom. 2 and 3 [Littré, 6. 280–82]; Int. 13 [Littré, 7. 200].

32Loc. Hom. 13 [Littré, 6. 298–302].

33Celsus 7. 7. 15; Galen, op. cit., note 19 above, De methodo medendi, 10. 937–42.

34Coac. 5. 502 [Littré, 5. 700].

35Int. 12, 13 [Littré, 7. 198–200].

36Loc. Hom. 21 [Littré, 6. 312–4].

37Aph. 7. 87 [Littré, 4. 608].

38Galen, op. cit, note 19 above, Introductio seu medicus, 14. 782.

39Celsus 7. 7. 15.

40Int. 28 [Littré, 7. 242].

41Int. 19, 24, 25 [Littré, 7. 214, 228, 230]. Gynaecological works attest a secondary meaning mykes “suppuration”; this and the cognate verb mykoomai “suppurate” are perhaps allied with myxa “mucus” and the adjective myxodes “mucus-like”, as in Mul. 1. 40 [Littré, 8. 96].

42See S Kuriyama, The expressiveness of the body and the divergence of Greek and Chinese medicine, New York, Zone Books, 2002. For a fuller discussion of these views and of chronological questions, see E M Craik, ‘Knife and fire: medical practice of east and west’, in Proceedings of COE meeting held at Kyoto November, 2003, published as Globalization, Kyoto, Iwanami Shoten, 2004, pp. 227–43.

43Textbooks—whether simple field guides such as Jonathan D Trobe and Richard E Hackel, Field guide to the eyes, Philadelphia, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2002, or magisterial works of reference, such as David J Spalton, Roger A Hitchings and Paul A Hunter (eds), Atlas of clinical ophthalmology, Philadelphia, Elsevier Mosby, 2005—are arranged accordingly by lids, conjunctiva, iris, retina etc.

44Vid. Ac. [Littré, 9.152–60]. For a fuller discussion of ophthalmological questions touched on in this paper, see E M Craik, Two Hippocratic treatises: On sight and On anatomy, Leiden, Brill, 2006.

45Loc. Hom. 13 [Littré, 6. 298–302]; Morb. 2. 12 [Littré, 7. 18–22]; cf. 1 [Littré, 7. 8].

46Vid. Ac. 3 [Littré, 9. 154].

47Loc. Hom. 21 [Littré, 6. 312–14].

48Int. 13 [Littré, 7. 200].

49See Jürgen Kovacs and Paul U Unschuld, Essential subtleties on the silver sea: the Yin-hai jing-wei, a Chinese classic on ophthalmology, Berkeley, and London, University of California Press, 1998.

50Cheng Xinnong (ed.), Chinese acupuncture and moxibustion, Beijing, Foreign Language Press, 1987, esp. pp. 231–3.

51Loc. Hom. 3 [Littré, 6. 282 L.]; Epid. 6. 5. 15 [Littré, 5. 320]; Aer. 22 [Littré, 2. 78]; Genit. 2 [Littré, 7. 472].

52Galen, op. cit., note 19 above, De methodo medendi, 10. 937; De compositione medicamentorum secundum locos, 12. 701.

53See, for example, Vadime Elisseeff (ed.), The silk roads: highways of culture and commerce, Paris, UNESCO, 1998.

54For a detailed examination of this question, see Craik, op. cit., note 42 above; for a short summary, see E M Craik, ‘The lasting significance of Hippocratic medicine’, in A Chaniotis and C Kuhn (eds), Historizing classics: continuities, contrasts, controversies, Stuttgart, Franz Steiner, 2008, section 6.