Book Reviews communication such as pictures or speech in the Dgl 235.80, US$131.00 (90-04-10265-5); early modern period were more complex than is vol. 2: pp. xlii, 489, Dgl 196.13, US$109 now usually assumed, and the medical perils of (90-04-120-12-2) (set 90-04-1213-0). reading in the eighteenth century, as analysed by Adrian Johns, were thought to be far more It is rare for a collection of fragments with pervasive than even Roy Porter has documented. commentary to sustain a passionate reading from The third section takes on the print revolution cover to cover commanded by a book. This one of the nineteenth century, where Jonathan does it. The two compact volumes of Philip Topham, Eugenia Rolda´n Vera, and James van der Eijk’s new Diocles combine solid Secord write of useful knowledge, progress and scholarship and a fine sense of textual detail with the dissemination of increasingly broad-based originality and power in the reconstruction of popularizations and other forms of public text. ideas, cultural climate and intellectual By the mid-nineteenth century, it is argued, personality from predominantly doxographic most significant science was appearing in material, and with reader-friendliness in the periodicals rather than books, and a noticeable presentation of what could easily appear arid demarcation between popular and e´lite had or esoteric. It makes thoroughly enjoyable emerged. The authors here show very reading, and not only for the specialist. Volume persuasively how writing and publishing helped I contains the texts with apparatus and in constructing the identities of science and translation, a general introduction, a list of the scientists at this key time. The section is rounded fragments with informative synopsis of the off by an essay on the Victorian editors of Bacon general themes, indices which include one of and the new ideologies of the period, revealing verbatim quotations, abbreviations and just how far past practitioners of science and concordances. Volume II is taken up by the medicine have been committed to using print to commentary, with an analytical introduction, establish the credentials of their own work. bibliography, an appendix, indices to the volume Several authors in fact touch on the issue of and an addenda et corrigenda. intellectual property and how the concept Van der Eijk’s edition supersedes by far the can usefully be regarded as inhering in the older one by Max Wellmann.1 Along with new social arrangements that build up around the material it brings a radical shift in focus, general printed page. approach and specific strategies. The In concluding this wide ranging, challenging relationship between Diocles and Aristotle is an and always thoughtful volume, Nick Jardine example of innovative historical reconstruction. discusses the implications for the sciences of the Van der Eijk rejects traditional ideas of quest for legitimacy though printed materials. ‘‘teacher–disciple’’ influence, defended by Books and the sciences in history is an influential scholars like Wellmann, Jaeger and authoritative, learned, and thoroughly readable others, in favour of a complex model of analysis that surely marks a milestone in the way intellectual cooperation between equals. His we approach our subject. perspective allows for divergence of opinion and a flexible chronology between the two Janet Browne, thinkers—simple issues which have nevertheless The Wellcome Trust Centre for the imposed artificial and far-reaching constraints on History of Medicine at UCL scholarship so far. Unlike Wellmann, who treated Diocles as one among other members of a Philip J van der Eijk, Diocles of Carystus: ‘‘Sicilian school’’ in Greek medicine and a collection of the fragments with translation and accorded him a minimal commentary, commentary. Volume one: Text and translation;

Volume two: Commentary, Studies in Ancient 1 Medicine, vols 22 and 23, Leiden and Boston, Max Wellmann, Die Fragmente der sikelischen A€rzte Akron, Philistion und des Diokles von Karystos, Brill, 2000–2001, vol. 1: pp. xxxiv, 497, Berlin, 1901.

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Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.35.93, on 01 Oct 2021 at 05:01:55, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025727300008498 Book Reviews van der Eijk is alert to ‘‘why’’ and ‘‘how’’ direct acquaintance, the aims of ancient questions throughout but eliminates labels authorities—are always in focus. Judgement on devoid of explanatory force, such as ‘‘Sicilian’’, quotations, language and views attributed to ‘‘Aristotelian’’, ‘‘proto-Empiricist’’ or ‘‘proto- Diocles is conducted with welcome scepticism. Sceptic’’, choosing to treat Diocles as a free, On the one hand, no cut-and-dry boundaries are ‘‘independent medical thinker’’ who achieved drawn between ‘‘fragment’’, ‘‘testimonium’’, the first successful synthesis between theoretical ipsissima verba and paraphrase or direct speech and empirical principles in ancient Greek purporting to quote Diocles. Thus one gets the medicine. His approach belongs in the larger benefits of a non-committal guideline to terms movement of debunking old textbook myths, possibly derived from Diocles without any of the such as that of a ‘‘Coan versus Cnidian’’ school of disadvantages of an index. On the other hand, a medicine, which have tended for a long time to healthy demarcation is made between Diocles’ blind scholars to the real problems posed by views and the language which reports them and ancient testimonials. And this is the best way to often carries doctrinal implications of its own. do justice to one of the most prominent medical Scholarly positions adopted in the past are no less authorities of the Greek world in the fourth thoroughly subjected to scrutiny. There are century BC. Diocles is indeed the first medical plenty of insightful new interpretations of figure whose very broad array of interests and important material and elegant solutions to long activities maps out for us an important link debated problems; such is the beautifully between the philosophical ‘‘schools’’ of Plato developed comment on Fr 177, in which Diocles and Aristotle and the medical, so-called illustrates the view, asserted in the same work ‘‘Hippocratic’’, tradition. (Fr 176), that (some) causes (must?) remain The commentary provides learned summaries unknown. of previous scholarship, thorough notes on One strength of the commentary is the creation terminology, interesting conjectures and ample of an original section on ‘‘Context’’ for almost presentations of textual difficulties, meticulous every piece discussed. Nothing of the kind was scrutiny of insoluble puzzles and balanced attempted by Wellmann. These sections offer discussion of ambiguities. Alternative introductions to the often difficult subject-area interpretations are always given equal attention. where the fragment belongs. Even when they are The evidence is never forced when knowledge is minimal, one still finds the relevant references to impossible to attain, as in identifying materia primary and secondary literature. The ‘‘Context’’ medica and disease entities or establishing also makes available knowledge difficult to chronology. Particularly relevant on obtain, such as the lucid summary of Book 6 of methodological grounds are the elaborate Galen’s treatise on Simples or the descriptions analyses of doxographic modes of simplification of ancient diseases pieced together from and contamination, which are crucial for a correct appraisal of testimonials. So you learn in Fr 43b purport to reproduce Diocles and evaluating the how the attribution of one idea to several reliability of what is attributed to him. Van der Eijk authorities should have saved unnecessary shows, very plausibly, how the doxographer has research on ‘‘true’’ origins, and, in Frr 185–6, fabricated a ‘‘refutation’’of Herophilus and other post- Dioclean authorities, which he attributes to Diocles. how analysis of one simple element—Diocles’ But I doubt that the refutation draws on ‘‘ingredients manner of reporting—dispels a plethora of which, each individually, derive from Diocles’ speculations in scholarly literature.2 Issues which thought’’ (pp. 84–5). General beliefs in the existence of bear on the evaluation of sources—transmission, four humours or pneuma are too vague; what would be needed is some specific view on them, especially on pneuma in relation to seed theory. The only possible 2 Theory of an ‘‘elaborate refutation’’ of Dioclean ‘‘ingredient’’ confirmed by another source, Archidamus by Diocles, II, p. 364. See also on Frr the view that seed originates in the brain and spinal 51a–d (anomalia general cause of disease) or on Fr 40, marrow (cf Frr 41a and b), is annulled by the fact that which is guided by a systematic demarcation between the Anonymous also attributes to Diocles the rival view two main hermeneutic tasks: finding out which parts that seed originates in nutriment (pp. 30–31).

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Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.35.93, on 01 Oct 2021 at 05:01:55, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025727300008498 Book Reviews several sources. There are also summaries of reference edition of Diocles. Van der Eijk has ‘‘Contents’’ for individual fragments. These are produced an indispensable source-book for generally useful, especially for long pieces anyone working in ancient medicine which is a and intricate arguments, although some are tremendous addition to the rapidly growing field repetitious and occasionally misleading. The of fragments literature. commentary supplies an impressively rich network of parallels from the medical Manuela Tecusan, tradition prior to Diocles, especially the The Wellcome Trust Centre for the Hippocratic, whose selection is none the less History of Medicine at UCL discriminative. I have one reservation concerning the Volker Scheid, Chinese medicine in presentation of the material. Along with the contemporary China: plurality and synthesis, familiar ‘‘dubia’’ (‘‘D’’), the collection offers a Science and Cultural Theory series, Durham and class of ‘‘unnamed’’ fragments (‘‘U’’), where London, Duke University Press, 2002, xx, 407, Diocles’ name is supplied either from a previous £18.50 (paperback 0-8223-2872-0). occurrence of the type ‘‘those listed above’’ or from an authorial formula which demonstrably Is inconsistency of practice and lack of includes Diocles, such as ‘‘the (four) ancients’’ of systematization a sign of the inferiority of Asian the Anonymous of Brussels. Creating a new medical systems? Is it a failure of contemporary category is felicitous: what recommends it is a practitioners to understand a more coherent frustrating problem of Dioclean scholarship, ancient tradition, now shrouded by time? Or namely the collective, non-specific nature of a does the stunning array of modern and ancient large part of the material. Views are often theories and techniques available under the attributed to Diocles in groups of ‘‘typical rubric of Chinese medicine allow creative ancients’’ comprising Hippocrates, Praxagoras, freedom to the medical artisan, are they ‘‘flexible Herophilus, Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics. Since tools in the hands of skilled practitioners’’? pointing out individual items in these collective Working with some of the elders of Beijing’s creations cuts across all the kinds and degrees of medical community through the 1990s, Scheid uncertainty represented by ‘‘D’’, ‘‘U’’ and brings his extensive experience as practitioner doubtful attributions, it may have been even more and medical anthropologist to a new analysis of felicitous to gather the ‘‘Collective’’ rather the multiplicity of phenomena called Chinese than the ‘‘Unnamed’’ testimonials in a medicine. separate class. In six distinctive, yet interrelated essays For a work of such complexity there are Scheid explores many factors that have come to remarkably few misprints and errors. One could bear on the development of contemporary disagree on various details of translation and medical practice in China. With detailed and interpretation; object to the alternation of intimate description of such aspects of practice as standard and small type, especially within one, case history writing, innovative theories and two or three lines, or when the large print does techniques, practitioner training and patient not make sense without the small; or quibble choice, Scheid places himself at the vanguard about the thematic ordering of fragments where a of a handful of researchers engaged in ‘‘main theme’’ is hard to detect, or where remedying the over-simplified portrayals of provenance from Dioclean works—the criterion Chinese medicine inherent in common of Wellmann’s edition, wisely rejected by polarities: Western scientific theory versus van der Eijk—still clashes with the thematic Chinese pragmatic knowledge, tradition criterion. But eliciting comments and criticisms versus modernity or ‘‘holism’’ versus is proof of the book’s huge impact on the future of reductionism. our studies, and the main point to be made is that Arguing convincingly for the diverse nature of from now on this will be the authoritative Chinese medicine and incorporating a concise

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