The study of emotions involves not only medical statements, but also philosophical issues, denoting an interaction between body and soul and, consequently, between medicine and philosophy. The relationship of these two disciplines was the topic of the conference ‘Medical Understanding of Emotions’, held at the University of Patras in 2017, whose result is the volume under review. The papers intend to show the perception of feelings in ancient cultures, considering even their predominance in modern medical practice and their medical conceptualisation in order to shed fresh light on this area of research. As the editors note in the introduction, the contributions were conceived before the COVID-19 pandemic; and their authors may now have different conclusions based on their personal experience, while readers too may be influenced by the pandemic situation. After these preliminary notes and a brief paragraph on pathologisation, there is a description of the three sections that constitute the book.
The first part, ‘Emotions Across Medicine and Philosophy’, examines feelings as a heuristic tool, highlighting the contacts of medicine and philosophy and, consequently, the analogies and the differences in their approach. As P.N. Singer notes in the opening chapter, this enquiry involves lexicological issues, and this emerges from the variety of connotations of the term passion, due to the polysemic nature of the Latin passio and the Greek πάθος. Starting from this consideration, the so-called ‘affections of the soul’ (πάθη ψυχῆς) in Platonic, Neoplatonic, Stoic and Galenic thought are explored: in Galen, in particular, two models of analysis and therapy for the ψυχή result, ethical and bodily, with a complex overlap between the two. Likewise, the importance of linguistic tools appears in the following essay, in which Spatharas discusses how Gorgias employed medical metaphors in the Encomium of Helen. Remodelling the perception of the speech according to theories about vision – especially that of Democritus – and postulating a materialist soul, a noteworthy analogy of λόγος and φάρμακα is created: the speech is a toxic or a therapeutic φάρμακον, producing visual effects that disturb the soul, just as a drug disturbs and rearranges the humoral constitution. The last contribution in Part 1, by S. Rangos, focuses on the concept of θαύμαζειν and its interpretations: Plato and Aristotle considered wonder as the psychological origin of philosophy, whereas in the Hippocratic Corpus it is related to ignorance. Noting this gap between philosophy and medicine makes it possible to consider the approaches of these two fields of knowledge: they both address nature to reveal secrets, yet with different purposes, one for knowing and the other for understanding.
In Part 2, ‘Emotions in the Medical Room’, the Hippocratic Corpus is taken into account – and sometimes also other sources, for example in the third chapter – in order to make comparisons with the perception of a certain feeling in Greek thought, not only in medical practice. In the first essay E. Craik highlights the connection of mental, emotional and physical states that emerges from Aphorisms, Epidemics, On Regimen and other Hippocratic treatises: women were seen as extremely susceptible to irrational fears; this brings Craik to explore attitudes to female physiology and psychology, noting that the author of On Diseases of Girls could have influenced Aristotle's perception of feelings. The two following chapters are of particular interest, being devoted to shame and its rare occurrences in Hippocratic writings: J. Kosak tries to understand how actions of withdrawal and veiling did not necessarily indicate this emotion, but also sadness or loss of self, showing the role of gesture and its different meanings depending on age, gender and diagnosis; C. Thumiger recognises an evolution of the attitude towards shame in Greek medical literature, also quoting non-medical sources – especially Sophocles’ Ajax –, and noting that only in late antiquity was there more attention towards the feelings of patients. The closing contribution in Part 2, by Kazantzidis, examines the attachment to behavioural traits, considering case studies of women in the Hippocratic Corpus: in view of the concepts of δυσθυμία or the fact of being δυσάνιος, emotions can be said to result as symptoms and to ‘guide us into what is ultimately a bodily origin of illness’ (p. 178). Particularly noteworthy is the last part of this essay, which provides an overview of the debate in the modern medical field, mentioning such researchers as O. Sachs and the importance that he gave to neurological and psychological disorders.
The third and closing Part, ‘Medico-philosophical Treatments of Emotion’, is devoted to the pathologisation of feelings in philosophical and medical contexts, paying attention to the idea of ‘therapy of the soul’. This emerges from the chapter by T. Tieleman: here a new approach to the relationship of philosophy and medicine is taken, considering fragments attributed to Posidonius of Apamea, which denote his unexpected interest in medicine. On the basis of evidence from Plutarch and Galen, Posidonius appears to reflect the weaving between soul and body, already explored by Chrysippus. The testimony of the ἰατρός of Pergamon is necessary to reach these conclusions; his works are addressed again in the following three essays, with particularly attractive results: starting from the theory on the three parts of the soul and taking into account several passages from Affections of the Soul, D. Kaufman shows how Galen incorporated Platonic, Peripatetic and Stoic thought to develop his ideal of ἀπάθεια; J. Devinant explores the connection between emotions and clinical conditions, highlighting that they are different kinds of disorders and that they imply different concepts of the soul; finally, S.P. Mattern examines Galen's understanding of melancholia and its link with fear, quoting the case of a patient who believed that Atlas would drop the world, described in Galen's commentary to the first book of Hippocrates’ Epidemics.
The key tenet underlying the volume is the fact that in the ancient world emotions were not perceived as they are today, nor do medical authors seem to have cared about the effects of bodily illnesses in their patients. The contributions keep this in mind and try to deepen several aspects of the relationship between medicine and philosophy, mostly addressing authors from both these disciplines, but sometimes taking into account other literary sources. The accuracy in the analysis of the passages quoted and translated and the comparisons made result in a great overview on ancient feelings. For this reason, the volume is an important instrument to understand the approaches, methods and goals of ancient medicine and philosophy in the discourse involving emotions. The hope is that this volume could shed fresh light on this field of study and open future research, revealing new discoveries on the medical pathologisation and conceptualisation of feelings.
