Brother AACOOLDRE : The Stoics influenced by Hippocrates the so-called father of Medicine

AACOOLDRE

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ATTEMPTING TO TRACE THE STOICS INFLUENCE OF

THEIR TEMPERATURE DEGREE

By Andre Austin

The Stoics believed that when there was an excess or deficiency of the Elements Fire, Air, water, dry or moist it leads to destruction. The Stoics believed the best temperature to be in was warm the same as the breath of the soul. They did not come up with this being isolated from everybody else. I will attempt to trance this ideology to where ever it may lead me. The ancient Egyptians taught that the heart and eyes are warm. The Lukewarm church at Laodicea were called Wretched” and pitiful” (Rev 3:17),the exact terms by coincidence (?) that the Stoic Epictetus had to fend off is remarkable. See my notes below.

HIPPOCRATIC WRITINGS

Hippocrates was the Greek father of medicine. He was born in 460BC. The Alexandrian school in Egypt collected his medical treatises in the third century by their scholars. The Greek father of medicine had a spiritual daddy Asclepius (Imhotep).

On the Sacred Disease

For Hippocrates thought that when “the person becoming speechless cannot draw his breath, but the breathe (pneuma) stops, the brain is contracted… All these things we endure from the brain, when it is not healthy, but is more hot, more cold, more moist, or more dry than natural…”

“He is grieved and troubled when the brain is unseasonably cooled and contracted beyond its wont”…

And the disease called the Sacred arises from causes as the others, namely, those things which enter and quit the body, such as cold, the sun, and the winds, which are ever changing and are never at rest…Thus, then, the physician should understand and distinguish the season of each, so that at one time he may attend to the nourishment and increase, and at another to abstraction and diminution. And in this disease as in all others, he must strive not to feed the disease, but endeavor to wear it out by administering whatever is most opposed to each disease, and not that which favors and allied to it…but whoever is acquainted with such a change in men, and can render a man humid and dry, hot and cold by regimen, could also cure this disease, if he recognizes the proper season for administering his remedies, without minding purifications, spells, and all other illiberal practices of a like kind”.

Aphorisms Section 3:1-2

“the change of the season mostly engender diseases, and in the seasons great changes either of heat or cold, and the rest agreeably to the same rule.

Of natures (temperaments?), some are well-or ill-adapted to different seasons, places, and kinds of diet”.

Galen another Physician (130AD-200AD) wrote On the Natural Faculties helps us understand Hippocrates.

He states “The bodies act upon and are acted upon by each other in virtue of the warm, cold, moist and dry” ( Galen 2:9). “The warm has most power in connection with all functions” (2:8).

Aristotle stated and demonstrated with regard to our bodies being compounded out of the warm, the cold, the dry and the moist, and how he says that among these the warm is the most active” (2:8).

“That alteration is effected mainly by the warm principle” (2:4). Hippocrates said “the hot principle being most active” But also said that when the blood of an animal is well blended its warm according to Galen.

Genesis is compounded of alteration and shaping…the seed having been cast into the womb or into the earth” (1:5).

Aristotle is shown by enumeration of the aforesaid doctrines which emanated first from Hippocrates, secondly from Aristotle, thirdly from the Stoics” (2:4).

Galen had wrote that the best Physician is also a Philosopher. The stoic philosophy was influenced by the writings of Hippocrates according to Galen. This was important to me when I had the theory that the term “Lukewarm” might have been a Stoic term. The name Luke is associated with the Physician/Healer and Luke might be a pun for look. Luke’s purpose for writing was to document what “Eyewitnesses” saw. The desire to See god are themes well known in Egyptian literature to become cured. The stoic Pliny wrote that good eyesight was protected from the Hot and Cold.

Notes:

The Stoics taught to suppress the passions and be indifferent to the Hot and Cold. This indifference was also defined by the Stoic Epictetus, (60-138), as “not to be vexed, if others have the advantage over you…be yourself content with firmness of mind” (Discourses 2: chapter 6). He advised people to drink no cold water or have a cold desire Book 3: Chapter 15. He also challenged anyone to think of his fellow stoics as “Wretched” and “unhappy” book 2: Chapter 23 & Book 2 Chapter 19. Now what a coincidence. If Lukewarm is a Stoic term we have the Bible also calling the Lukewarm Laodicean church as “Wretched” and pitiful=sad concern (Rev 3:17).
 

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