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The hippocratic treatise On Anatomy1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

E. M. Craik
E. M. Craik
Affiliation:
Kyoto University, Japan/University of St Andrews
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Extract

On Anatomy (Anat.) is the shortest treatise preserved in the Hippocratic Corpus (HC). It describes the internal configuration of the human trunk. The account is for the most part descriptive, function being largely disregarded and speculation completely eschewed. Though systematic it is unsophisticated: two orifices for ingestion are linked by miscellaneous organs, vessels, and viscera to two orifices for evacuation. There is a clear progression in two parallel sections: first, trachea to lung, lung described, location of heart, heart described, kidneys to bladder, bladder described, bladder to genitals, conclusion; and second, oesophagus to belly, location of diaphragm, location of spleen, location and description of belly (close to liver), belly to intestine/colon, colon to rectum and anus, conclusion. The text offers good basic topographical or regional anatomy (the organs studied as they lie in relationship with one another in the different regions of the body). That the work is concerned with human anatomy is certain from the precise description of lung and liver, with features peculiar to human organs; and is corroborated by frequent references to comparative anatomy, with which familiarity is apparently assumed. Such anatomical knowledge, based on extensive observation of animals (probably sacrificial victims as well as laboratory specimens), may have been corroborated by some human dissection, perhaps of the aborted foetus or exposed infant, in conjunction with opportunistic observation of war wounded and accident victims. While the syntax is bald, telegraphic, and asyndetic, the vocabulary is recondite, and poetic. There is erratic omission of the article and recurrent use of compendious comparisons. These features suggest that Anat. may be an abridgement of a fuller and more flowery account; this hypothesis is supported by several passages where erroneous or unclear information apparently results from excessive compression or imperfect comprehension of a source.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , May 1998 , pp. 135 - 167
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1998

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References

2 A Budé text by M.–P. Duminil is promised.

3 See Greenhill (1864–6), Irigoin (1980).

4 Ibycus, TLG: Aretaeus, Aetius, Galen, and Oribasius

5 Maladies of the lung and respiratory tract occupy much space in the HC: see especially Int. init. and LocHom. 14.

6 Following van der Linden, Triller emends the two occurrences of . However, this is unnecessary, as the difference between words (from 6s, one and the same) and words (from like, resembling) is not always strictly maintained; except that whereas words can mean similar, words cannot mean the same. Thus (close in nuance to here) can mean either of like form or uniform; and coexists with which must mean of like form. In our passage, no instance of imperatively demands the sense of sameness rather than similarity; and only one (the case of the spleen) demands the sense of similarity rather than sameness. The Greek is ambiguous, but reference to comparative anatomy (rings like [those in other animals]) is more probable than to a series of rings; see further below.

7 Ibycus, TLG: 46 occurrences, most Hellenistic or later, but found in Hesiod, Aischylos and Plato.

8 Hence Triller tr. coadimplet, following Cornarius in preference to Foesius implet.

9 Tpeirfoai. is a common verb of orientation in the body, not only of bodily parts; but also of disease, pain, bile, phlegm, etc.

10 As Foesius translated notis cavernosis compunctus, it seems that he finally elected to emend with a word meaning cavernous, .

11 The verb is common in post–classical, especially ecclesiastical, writers (Ibycus, TLG: 47 occurrences, headed by 7 in Nicephorus Gregoras); but there are good fifth–century antecedents. Euripides uses it of establishing a cult image, 978 and employs with similar nuance, IT. 1481; cf. also Ba. 1339.

12 So earlier editors; but Smith (1990) corrects to and .

13 For the compound verb, there is a parallel in a Demokritean citation, with regard to dream images deeply penetrating the body , DK 68 A 77 = Plu. Mor. 734f.

14 But several other identifications have been canvassed: 1. (i) = ducts and (ii) = vena cava. The of the mss is taken by LSJ to be an imaginary system of ducts connecting the heart with the liver; similarly Littre translates beaucoup de. Harris (1973), pp. 82–3 is impressed by the contrast between and the great vein; and translates many a bronchia [= artery?] finding here a double system of blood vessels centred on the heart, with veins and arteries clearly distinguished. But the trouble with this is that even if ppoyxirj may represent a plurality, does not; and it is hard to extract a system from a tube; also the vessels are not centred on the heart, but merely leading from it. In short, a distinction between veins and arteries cannot be read into this bald text.

15 It occurs many times in 77. Locr., a precis of PI. 77. preserved in some Platonic mss, apparently (so Taylor ed., 1928) in an attempt to give a superficial Pythagorean colouring to the work. It becomes extremely common in post–classical Greek, for instance in Eusebius (Ibycus, TLG).

16 Trillers interpretation (above n. 14.3) has some such rationale: the umbilical vein by which revera infantis corpusculum nutritur could readily be associated with the portal vein. However, Triller does not totally exclude the vena cava in this connection; and the latter is rendered likely by the fact that the course of blood from placenta is through umbilical vein to ductus venosus to inferior vena cava; before, at birth, the ductus venosus collapses with the collapse of the umbilical vein; see C. W. F. Burnett, The Anatomy and Physiology of Obstetrics (London, 1953), pp. 129–34. It is not impossible that there was some observation of this if the aborted foetus was examined (though observation of the ductus venosus is not recorded until the sixteenth century).

17 Trillers emendation rjiraoiv to all other livers is made on the grounds that the human liver, though resembling that of some animals, such as cow and sheep, is not like that of all other creatures; but this objection seems to be met by the qualification in the second part of the sentence.

18 Triller, keeping, argues that the phrase does not relate to location at all, either of the organ or of its gates, but to function: in his view Seijios means not dexter but receptorius, acceptoritu, from root Sexopeu and describes the place which receives succum chylostan and puts it in the receptacle of the liver. There is some slight support for this ingenious idea from and perhaps from Hsch. attribution to Demokritos of usage of the verb to describe blood vessels Segafievac iv DK 68 B 135. However, Trillers interpretation is to be rejected for these reasons: is so familiar in other senses, clearly suggests a definite location in the body (cf. title of Lochom.); and the writer of this treatise is concerned throughout with description, not with function.

19 Triller regards this vessel as the descending vena cava (Galen de ven. et art. diss.); but a vessel other than the great one, argued above to be the vena cava, seems intended.

20 There is some usage of drroreiveiv in Aristotle and Plato and much in later Greek; it is favoured by Joannes Chrysostom, Galen, Eusebius, and Simplicius (Ibycus, TLG).

21 The interpretation is commended by A. von Haller, Bibliotheca Anatomica (Zurich, 1774–7), vol. 1, p. 20. Trillers emendation of v is not necessary; though it would render the animal sense certain rather than probable.

22 Triller punctuates tr. vesica quae nervosa, constrictiva est et expansiva. There is some force in his assertion that res; but the parallels for this extraordinary meaning attributed to ovxr) are not altogether convincing: and scholiast Ar. Ran. 1067 associated with coarctare, complicare, in angustum cogere.

23 Earlier emendations (see apparatus) may be briefly considered: the interpretation of Triller (with reference to the sphincter, tr. The constriction of the bladder is deep within) involves a level of detail out of keeping with the rest of the treatise; that of Littre (tr. From a distance is the working of the bladder for the purpose for which it exists) involves obscure sense and unidiomatic expression; that of Ermerins (tr. From the bladder there is a channel outside) gives good sense, but is very distant from the mss. Triller emends on the basis of Galens gloss.

24 On such lists, and their possible importance as a source for Hebd., see Mansfeld (1971), pp. 197–202.

25 The derivation is doubtless (Irigoin, 1980) from transporting what is eaten.

26 In the HC, the term is applied also to the mouth of the womb. Only later, as in NT, Soranus, and Galen, did the word take over as stomach, a sense firmly fixed in Latin and hence modern European languages.

27 Trillers emendation tr. cicatricatus or rugis incisus imports a needlessly explicit reference to this aspect.

28 Reference to the length of the intestine was a common element in lists of the seven organs transporting food and breath; see Mansfeld (1971), p. 197.

29 Pollux finds an etymological link, involving digestive suffering, 2.209; for other fanciful etymologies based on an original meaning, see Ath. 262a.

30 Even in the Pneumatic school of medicine, influenced by Posidonius and the Stoics, the seven were defined in various ways; see Mansfeld (1971).

31 On the tradition, see Smith (1979) and von Staden (1989); on terminology see Lloyd (1983) and Skoda (1988).

32 This was already noted by Littrf; see now Duminil (1980) for analysis of structure and content.

33 See Edelstein (1932, tr. 1967; but Edelstein suggests in a cryptic footnote that Demokritos may have been an exception and this notion has a bearing on Anat.), Lloyd (1975), Longrigg (1993).

34 See Lome (1981), pp. 361 sqq.

35 Toilers commentary constantly superimposes his own knowledge on the text.

36 Comparison of usage in Mochl. shows that in paraphrasing Artie, the author often repeats the base text almost verbatim while omitting such otiose words as the definite article: e.g. Mochl. 8 (axpos without article) Artie. 18 (anpos with article). But it is omitted in both model and precis, Mochl. 12 Artie. 22; and in Fract. 4a is followed in the next section by is Similarly, in the compressed annotations of Epid., is commonly used without the article (6.1, 4.19); cf. also is at 1 and 5.

37 This was a highly prosperous region, with an important trade in grain: evidently it had its own cultural as well as economic vitality; but of this little direct evidence survives. Like Demokritos, the sophist Protagoras came from Abdera. (Demokritos is never described as a sophist, though in many respects his intellectual activity corresponds to that typical in the sophistic movement. For some reason, he did not interest Plato.)

38 See already Triller (1766), p. 258, who regarded the author as aut ipsum Democritum out alium Abderitum philosophwri; echoed more sceptically by Ermerins (1864), Prolegomena to Anat., XLII, finding a sophistic attemptDemocritipersonam induere.

39 Cf. also the descriptions of Demokritos searching out, Ep. 17, as an interpreter of , Ep. 20, and as the writer Ep. 23. There are some seventy titles, according to Diogenes Laertius, DK 68 A 33 = D.L. 9.45–49; but on the sources of D.L. see the sceptical remarks of W. K. C. Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy (Cambridge, 1965), vol. II, p. 388, n..

40 See RE s.v. Bolos of Mende on later attempts to lend respectability to spurious writings by arrogating the name of Demokritos; cf. especially Plu. Sympos. 641b.

41 Roman critics admired Demokritos style, finding it poetic. Cicero describes him as ornate locutus (DK 68 A 34 = Cic. de oral 1.11.49). There is considerable evidence that he affected an arcane vocabulary: Kallimachos compiled a συνταγμ⋯των and Hegesianax wrote a .

42 Perhaps this preoccupation of Demokritos in some degree anticipates the Aristotelian atempt to distinguish parts of the body as ept or the latter being such as hand, face which do not by division become two of the same thing. But we need not look beyond the HC to find similar ideas in circulation; cf. LocHom. 1 (of the organic unity of the body), ofiorponos Viet. 1.6 and 6p. Hom. 3. Rather, the abstract principle of sameness and difference, with respect to shape and colour, is here given pragmatic implementation in study of the colour and shape of the bodily organs.

43 On the letters, see Smith (1990), edition with translation and commentary, especially pp. 102–5 on Ep. 23; see also Littr6 IX.392; DK 68 C 6; Temkin (1985).

44 See Smith (1990), p. 93, n. 1

45 See., p. 95, n. 1 and p. 99, n. 1.

46 p. 42.

47 The author borrowed the anatomy and composed the proem; cf. 32 detachable philosophic proem.

48 Smith (1990), p. 33.

49 See Jouanna (1992), pp. 48–50 on Hippocrates connections with North Greece and pp. 36–7 on Hippocrates and Demokritos; also Longrigg (1993), pp. 66–9, 93–7 on Demokritean ideas in the HC.