THE SPECTRUM OF HEALTH IN ANCIENT GREEK MEDICINE AND PHILOSOPHY

Abstract This article examines a fundamental problem in ancient Greek medical thought, namely, how to conceptualize the variety of human health conditions. Beginning in the Classical period, the notion that health gradually shades into illness stood in tension both with the assumption that these categories are dichotomous and with the definition of health as an exact proportion. After examining how these matters were framed by Aristotle, this article explores two later attempts at solving the tensions. It is shown that Galen of Pergamon used the resources of Peripatetic philosophy to reconcile two of these conflicting intuitions while following certain Herophileans in rejecting the idea that health and illness are dichotomous. This article also offers an interpretation of the largely overlooked position of Asclepiades of Bithynia, that health does not admit of degrees. It is argued that this was a reasonable view within a corpuscular physiology and did not, pace Galen, lead to the ‘doctrine of perpetual suffering’. Asclepiades could have effectively deployed his account in arguments against the Empiricist sect and against humoural theories.