Disease

Use in the book

The substantival participle ὁ κάμνων means “the sick person.” It identifies the one who seeks the doctor and thus gives the medical argument a human subject before it is reformulated in terms of body, disease, medicine, and health.

The participle describes the person’s present condition. It should not be treated as a fixed moral classification: the sick person is not thereby one of the people the argument calls thoroughly bad.

Places to read

1. 217aἈλλ’ ὁ κάμνων οἶμαι διὰ τὴν νόσον — But the sick person, I think, because of the disease.
2. 215d
3. 218e

Use in the book

Disease is classified as bad and later as an enemy. It explains why the otherwise neutral body turns towards medicine: the body is a friend of medicine because of disease, and for the sake of health.

This role must be kept apart from health’s role as the proposed end. The related noun νόσημα at 220d calls badness an illness in the comparison of good to a remedy. These medical words support a hypothesis about affection that is subsequently challenged by desires that need not be harmful.

Places to read

1. 217bΝόσος μὲν δὴ κακόν — Disease, then, is bad.
2. 217a–c
3. 218e–219b2
4. 220d

Use in the book

The Hermetic maxims say that not every body is diseased but every diseased body is dissoluble. The statement links susceptibility to bodily breakdown with disease without claiming that every affection is illness. The regimen discussion separately describes illness following a disruptive change in habit.

Places to read

1. I.41.1.10Disease implies dissolubility in a sequence of bodily maxims.
2. I.47.7.2Illness follows a disturbance of accustomed regimen.

Translation in this edition

“Disease” or “illness” suits nosos; translating every instance of paschein as illness would erase a distinction.