It is also from Celsus that we first learn about disagreements in medicine as to what knowledge doctors must rely upon in order to cure patients: some held that experience and awareness of the evident cause of the illness were the essential ingredients, while others claimed that a thorough knowledge of human anatomy and physiology was required in addition to experience, so that a cause arising from deep within the body could be identified through reasoning (Med. proem. 9-53). The quarrel Celsus referred to was that between ‘‘Empiricists’’ and ‘‘Rationalists’’ (or ‘‘Dogmatists’’), and while this essentially epistemological argument among doctors originated among Greek-speakers of the eastern Mediterranean, it too transferred to Rome and was a part of the medical scene there from Celsus’ day to the time of Galen. When Celsus came to describe beliefs of the two medical sects, he switched from past tense verbs to the present tense and continued to do so when he added the third way of looking at what was essential to medical practice. These latter were the doctors of the Method, a sect which developed subsequent to the other two and did so primarily at Rome, classifying diseases according to bodily states and applying rules the Method established for treating each state (Med. proem. 54-73). While Soranus was a Methodist, Galen considered himselfan eclectic, choosing what was best from the Empiric and Rationalist points of view; he gave the quarrel full coverage and even claimed to have seen a doctrinal dispute erupt into fisticuffs at the bedside of a patient (Diff. puls. 1.1). Nonetheless Galen’s insistence on combining information gained from both empiric and dogmatic points of view and the influence he wielded over subsequent centuries seem to have lessened the vehemence in doctors’ epistemological arguments.
World History
