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A note on Erasistratus of Ceos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

G. E. R. Lloyd
G. E. R. Lloyd
Affiliation:
King's College, Cambridge
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Extract

In an article entitled ‘The Career of Erasistratus of Ceos’ in Rendiconti del Istituto Lombardo (Classe di Lettere e Scienze Morali e Storiche, 103, 1969, pp. 518–37, abbreviated as RL) and more briefly in his three-volume work on Ptolemaic Alexandria (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1972, Vol. 1 pp. 347 ff. and relevant notes in Vol. 2 pp. 503 ff., abbreviated as PA I and PA II), P. M. Fraser has recently re-examined the evidence concerning the life and work of the important third-century B.C. physician, anatomist and physiologist Erasistratus of Ceos. Fraser's analysis of the testimonies for the various Chrysippi is valuable; his insistence that there are no good grounds for rejecting the story, told in several ancient writers, that Erasistratus cured King Antiochus is not misplaced, and the conclusion that at some stage, at least, Erasistratus worked at Antioch should surely be accepted.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 95 , November 1975 , pp. 172 - 175
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1975

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References

1 RL p. 532, cf. PA II note 76, p. 507: ‘the claim that Erasistratus practised human anatomy seems weak’.

2 RL p. 518, cf. p. 537 and PA I p. 347. Fraser cites Susemihl and Beloch as earlier authorities for his thesis.

3 Fraser is mistaken when he identifies those ‘qui rationalem medicinam profitentur’ (Celsus, op. cit., para. 13) as the Methodists (PA II note 64, p. 505 and note 76, p. 507).

4 PA II note 76, p. 507 and cf. note 64, p. 505.

5 ‘The tradition is not unanimous in including the name of Erasistratus (as it is in telling the story essentially of Herophilus). Tertullian, reproducing the views of Soranus, a well-informed witness on this point, does not refer to Erasistratus apropos of human vivisection.’ Fraser sometimes writes as if it were certain that Tertullian reproduced Soranus: thus at PA I p. 349 he speaks of accepting ‘the positive statements of Celsus and Soranus’ concerning Herophilus. Yet that Soranus is Tertullian's source here is only an inference, though a very probable one, and elsewhere doxographical references in Tertullian do not always reproduce Soranus: see Waszink in his edition of the De Anima, Amsterdam, 1947, e.g. p. 329.

6 On the dissection of the uterus ch. 5, Kühn (K) II 895 Galen writes, however, of human dissection and nowhere attributes human vivisection to Herophilus.

7 Galen wrote a work in three books on the anatomy of Erasistratus, see K II 216 f. and XIX 13 f.

8 E.g. K V 650.

9 On precisely what is involved in attributing to Erasistratus the discovery of the valves of the heart, see the recent careful analysis of Lonie, I. M., ‘The paradoxical text “On the Heart”’, Medical History, 17, 1973, pp. 1–15 and 136–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 K V 206, cf. also K V 548–50.

11 K V 166.

12 Cf. also K V 646–7 and XVIII A 86.

13 PA II note 76, p. 507, cf. RL p. 529, note 28 and p.532.

14 Dissection of animals is attested in such passages as Galen, K II 648–9 and IV 718. On Fraser's view of K V 604, see above, p. 174.

15 This is Helmreich's text (Teubner, Vol. 1, 1907, p. 488). Kühn's (K III 673) differs in details, but yields substantially the same sense.

16 After the long quotation of Erasistratus (K V 602–4) Galen proceeds to criticism:

17 The in the phrase in the text quoted in the last note implies, if anything, that he had.

18 See, for example, the quotation from Herophilus at Galen K II 570–1.

19 PA I p. 349, cf. RL p. 531.

20 The idea that the Egyptian custom of mummification facilitated the practice of human dissection in Alexandria has often been put forward, but seems quite doubtful.

21 Apart from the passage in Galen (K. II 220–1) already mentioned, cf. also Fulgentius, , Mitologiarum, Helm, p. 9Google Scholar.

22 The only sound direct evidence associating Erasistratus with the Ptolemies is the statement in Caelius Aurelianus (On Chronic Diseases v 2 50–1, mentioned by Fraser at RL pp. 526 f.) that he prescribed a plaster for King Ptolemy's gout. But that report does not necessarily imply either that Erasistratus was, or that he was not, at Alexandria at the time.