Medicine

Use in the book

Medicine first enters as an impersonation. Critias tells his attendant that he wishes to introduce Charmides to a doctor and invites Socrates to pretend to know a headache remedy. Socrates accepts, but the role grows into an account of good Greek doctors, a purported Thracian teacher, and conditions for treating the soul before the body. At 158e he says that joint inquiry will keep him from undertaking his doctoring without examination. The language connects philosophical inquiry with treatment while leaving the original medical credential a pretext.

At 164a–c2 the doctor supplies a different problem. A physician who makes someone healthy does something beneficial and, under Critias' definition of doing good, acts temperately. But must the physician know when the action is beneficial and when not? Critias allows “perhaps not.” The resulting difficulty is not simply whether a medical practitioner knows any medicine. It is whether technical action, its benefit, and the agent's recognition of having acted temperately necessarily coincide. The passage does not state one precise reason for possible ignorance, so a lexicon should not settle it by inventing an exclusively diagnostic, predictive, or moral failure.

At 165c–d medicine is the first model for asking what a knowledge knows and what it accomplishes. It knows the healthy and produces health, a fine work and no small benefit. Critias' mathematical counterexamples challenge the demand that every knowledge have such a separate product, but do not remove the question of a determinate object. Medicine thereafter serves as a stable domain-specific expertise against which the scope of knowledge of knowledge is tested.

The central examination at 170b–171c23 asks whether a possessor of only second-order knowledge can distinguish a real physician from a pretender. The distinction requires attention to medical claims and performances: are the words true and the actions correct concerning healthy and diseased things? Without medical knowledge, the proposed higher-order expert cannot follow that test. If he can, he is a physician in addition to being temperate. This is a restriction of the isolated definition, not a rule that lay people can never form justified practical judgments about doctors by any means whatsoever.

The deliberately odd conclusion at 170e–171a2, that the physician does not know medicine, follows from the negotiated division of objects: medicine is itself a knowledge, and knowledge of knowledge has been assigned to temperance alone. It should be reported as a pressure generated by that arrangement, not as Socrates' unqualified belief that physicians lack their own expertise.

Finally, Socrates temporarily restores the dream's power to exclude false experts. Bodily health improves, but living knowledgeably has not yet been shown sufficient for happiness. At 174c medicine remains effective even when knowledge of good and bad is removed. At 174e–175a Socrates again assigns health to medicine rather than allowing supervisory knowledge to claim every subordinate art's work. The contrast separates technical effectiveness, human benefit, and the possible benefits of supervision. The argument's eventual impasse should prevent turning any one of these distinctions into an unquestioned final doctrine.

Places to read

1. 155b–158e23456The medical impersonation, healing story, and need for prior examination
2. 164a–c2Beneficial medical action may not include the agent’s awareness of its benefit or temperance
3. 165c–dMedicine knows the healthy and produces health
4. 170b–171c23Only domain-specific knowledge can test medical statements and actions as such
5. 173bThe dream provisionally excludes false doctors
6. 174b–175a2Medicine’s product is distinguished from the knowledge that makes technical achievements beneficial

Translation in this edition

The edition carefully retains “knowledge of the healthy” at 165c and later, instead of substituting “knowledge of health.” It uses “doctoring” once for Socrates' apparent practice at 158e. The distinction between the professional, the art, its object, and its result should remain visible.

ἰάομαι

Attested: ἰᾶσθαι / ἰᾶται (iasthai / iatai). Heal or cure; distinguished from merely applying a treatment and later used in the example of medical doing. References: 156b, 156c, 161e, 164b. Lexical identification: lemma: ἰάομαι. See Doctor and medicine.

ἰατρική

Attested: ἰατρική / ἰατρικὴ / ἰατρικῆς (iatrikē / iatrikē / iatrikēs). Medicine or the medical art; specified both by its object, the healthy and diseased, and by its product, health. References: 165c, 170b, 174e, 171a, 174c, 171b. Lexical identification: lemma: ἰατρική. See Doctor and medicine.

ἰατρός

Attested: ἰατρῷ / ἰατρός / ἰατρὸς (iatrōi / iatros / iatros). Doctor or physician; a craft expert used throughout to test knowledge, recognition and benefit. References: 155b, 164a, 170e, 173b. Lexical identification: lemma: ἰατρός. See Doctor and medicine.

βαρύνεσθαί (barynesthai)

To feel a heaviness or be weighed down in the head; the reported morning complaint. References: 155b. Lemma: βαρύνω. See Doctor and medicine.

προσέλθῃ (proselthēi)

Approach or come to; a patient presents himself to doctors with painful eyes. References: 156b. Lemma: προσέρχομαι. See Doctor and medicine.

συστῆσαι (systēsai)

Introduce or bring into contact; Critias proposes to introduce Charmides to Socrates as a doctor. References: 155b. Lemma: συνίστημι. See Doctor and medicine.

φράσαντος (phrasantos)

Having said or explained; Critias identifies Socrates as knowing a remedy. References: 155c. Lemma: φράζω. See Doctor and medicine.

Use in the book

At 107b–c2 the doctor is the correct adviser when citizens ask how people in the city can be healthy. Poverty and wealth make no difference to that competence. At 108e Socrates adds that Alcibiades can identify healthier food as better even though he does not claim medical skill; this makes his inability to name the better in his professed political domain more shameful.

The many can name what kind of thing a person is without being reliable judges of whether people are healthy or sickly (111d–112a2). At 126a health's presence and disease's absence model the specific condition by which the city too should be improved. These are separate uses of the analogy: one concerns criteria for expertise, the other its beneficial result.

At 131a the doctor as doctor knows bodily matters, not thereby the self. That qualification limits the scope of medical expertise rather than discrediting it within its domain. The unchecked patient at 134e–135a2 demonstrates the cost of rejecting that domain: lacking medical sense while preventing rebuke is likely to ruin his body. Political power without virtue is then judged through a similarly destructive mismatch of authority and competence.

Places to read

1. 107b–108e234Medical competence determines health advice and the meaning of healthier food
2. 111d–112a2Ordinary recognition does not establish medical expertise
3. 126aHealth and disease model presence and absence of a city-improving condition
4. 131aA doctor’s professional knowledge is distinguished from self-knowledge
5. 134e–135a2The uncorrectable patient without medical sense illustrates destructive license

Translation in this edition

The edition's “medical sense” renders νοῦν ἰατρικόν, not the bare possession of intelligence in every sphere. The claim at 131a includes καθ’ ὅσον ἰατρός, “insofar as he is a doctor”; omitting it would overstate the limitation.

ἰατρός / ἰατρικός

Attested: ἰατρὸν (iatron; 107c); ἰατρικὸν (iatrikon; 135a). At 107c: The doctor whom citizens seek when deliberating about health. At 135a: Medical, qualifying the understanding lacked by the unchecked patient. Lexical identification: family label: ἰατρός / ἰατρικός. See Medicine.

νόσος / νοσέω

Attested: νόσου (nosou; 126a); νοσοῦντι (nosounti; 134e). At 126a: Disease whose absence contributes to the body’s good order. At 134e: A sick person given unchecked freedom despite lack of medical understanding. Lexical identification: family label: νόσος / νοσέω. See Medicine.

ὑγίεια / ὑγιής / ὑγιεινός

Attested: ὑγιεινότερον (hygieinoteron; 108e); ὑγιείας (hygieias; 126a). At 108e: Healthier, the specification of what makes one food better. At 126a: Health’s presence as the body-improving condition. Lexical identification: family label: ὑγίεια / ὑγιής / ὑγιεινός. See Medicine.

Use in the book

Medicine first appears as an example of finding: healthy and sickly things are found by medicine, as the gods' intentions are said to be found by prophecy (314b). The relevant contrast is between a discipline and the objects it makes accessible. This is not yet a theory of legislation by doctors.

At 316c the example returns in a more concrete form, a writing about the health of the sick. The companion can identify the kind of expertise to which such a writing belongs, so Socrates can move from a familiar subject to its qualified knower. “Doctors” names those knowledgeable about these matters. The passage does not introduce a named medical author, a particular treatment, a school of medicine, or a dispute between methods.

The crucial addition is that doctors write what they accept as being, and that these writings are therefore medical laws (316d–e). A medical norm is intelligible here through the subject's realities and the practitioner's knowledge. When Socrates later says that whatever is right is lawful “for each,” medicine is the first example again (317b). Its role is to make a field-specific criterion of correctness appear natural before that criterion is applied to city government.

Medicine should be kept distinct from the trainer's activity. The sick and their health provide the writing example; the trainer supplies appropriate food to human bodies in the distribution example. The last answer adds labors and bodily exercise (321c). The fields are connected through care and competent ordering, but the dialogue does not erase their distinct practitioners or identify every bodily benefit with medical treatment.

Places to read

1. 314bτὰ μὲν ὑγιεινὰ καὶ νοσώδη ἰατρικῇ — Medicine is the means of finding what is healthy and sickly
2. 316cπερὶ ὑγιείας τῶν καμνόντων — Health is considered in relation to those who are sick
3. 316cἰατροὺς καλεῖς τοὺς ἐπιστήμονας περὶ τούτων — The professional name is attached to relevant knowledge
4. 316eἸατρικὰ ἄρα καὶ ἰατρικοὶ νόμοι — Both the writings and their rules are identified as medical
5. 317bτὸ ἰατρικόν — The medical case exemplifies the rule that what is right is lawful in its own field

Translation in this edition

The translation distinguishes the “health” about which doctors write, the “sick” whose health is considered, and the “healthy” and “sickly” things medicine finds. “Laws of medicine” preserves the dialogue's extension of nomos rather than smoothing it into “medical principles.”

Be sick — κάμνειν (kamnein)

κάμνειν (kamnein)

Be sick. Here to suffer illness; the substantival participle identifies the sick people whose health is the subject of the writing. Attested: καμνόντων (316c). Medicine and the health of the sick.

Doctors — ἰατρός (iatros)

ἰατρός (iatros)

Doctors. The practitioners named as those knowledgeable about the medical matters under discussion. The definition concerns relevant competence, not merely a claimed professional title. Attested: ἰατροὺς (316c). Medicine and the health of the sick.

Health — ὑγίεια (hygieia)

ὑγίεια (hygieia)

Health. The condition or good about which a medical writing speaks, specifically the health of people who are sick. Attested: ὑγιείας (316c). Medicine and the health of the sick.

Healthy — ὑγιεινός (hygieinos)

ὑγιεινός (hygieinos)

Healthy. Healthy or conducive to health, among the things medicine is said to find. The neuter plural names such things, not a group of healthy persons. Attested: ὑγιεινὰ (314b). Medicine and the health of the sick.

Medicine — ἰατρική (iatrikē) · ἰατρικῇ (314b).

ἰατρική (iatrikē)

Medicine. The craft by which what is healthy and sickly is found. Attested: ἰατρικῇ (314b). Medicine and the health of the sick.

Medicine — ἰατρική (iatrikē) · ἰατρικῆς (316c).

ἰατρική (iatrikē)

Medicine. The medical craft to which the writing belongs; the feminine adjective functions with craft supplied from the question. Attested: ἰατρικῆς (316c). Medicine and the health of the sick.

Of medicine — ἰατρικός (iatrikos)

ἰατρικός (iatrikos)

Of medicine. Medical; here qualifying the laws identified with doctors’ writings about health. Attested: ἰατρικοὶ (316e). Medicine and the health of the sick.

Sickly — νοσώδης (nosōdēs)

νοσώδης (nosōdēs)

Sickly. Sickly or associated with disease, contrasted with what is healthy as an object discerned by medicine. Attested: νοσώδη (314b). Medicine and the health of the sick.

Use in the book

Medicine is placed among helpers, after generalship (976a). Its object is the damage that seasons inflict on living beings through untimely cold, heat, and similar conditions. The seasonal image ties medical necessity to the bodily vulnerability already described at the opening. Life needs assistance because natural conditions can be experienced as hostile or mistimed.

The Athenian then denies the truest wisdom to the practices under discussion: they are carried along without measure, guessed at through opinions. This is a judgment of the speech, not a factual assessment of modern medicine. Nor is it a blanket claim that medical intervention never helps; classification as help has just been conceded. The distinction is between beneficial practical response and the knowledge that the argument wants to call highest wisdom.

The medical example also creates a tension the reader should retain. At 979a the celestial order supplies winds and rains that are not violent or without measure, while poor outcomes are attributed to human nature's unjust distribution of its life. The earlier medical passage nevertheless plainly speaks of untimely seasonal damage. The dialogue does not give a full reconciliation of every illness and every weather event with its beneficent cosmic order. It would be unwarranted to infer that it proves each sick person's illness to be that person's fault.

The later astronomical account relies on regularity, measure, and an attribution of intelligent causation. Medicine's exclusion helps define the desired contrast, but the dialogue does not submit astronomy to an identical case-by-case test of predictive success. That asymmetry is a legitimate interpretive pressure, already noticed by the supplied introduction. The lexicon should identify it rather than use the rejection of medicine as independent proof of astronomy's superiority.

Places to read

1. 976aἣν δὲ καλοῦσι μὲν ἰατρικήν — The practice is introduced under its familiar name
2. 976aβοήθεια δέ που καὶ αὕτη — Medicine too is help
3. 976aψύχει καὶ καύματι ἀκαίρῳ — The threats are cold and untimely heat
4. 976aληίζονται τὴν τῶν ζῴων φύσιν — The seasons metaphorically plunder living nature
5. 976aδόξαις … τοπαζόμενα — Opinion and conjecture qualify the epistemic verdict
6. 979aοὐκ ἐξαισίων οὐδὲ ἀμέτρων — The later account praises winds and rains that lack violence and excess

Translation in this edition

“Plunder” preserves the metaphor rather than replacing it with a modern disease mechanism. “Untimely” belongs grammatically to the stated heat phrase; the surrounding “and all such things” broadens the class of damaging conditions. “The truest wisdom” retains the superlative standard being applied.

Seasonal bodily harm — ψῦχος (psychos)

ψῦχος (psychos)

Seasonal bodily harm. Cold is one of the conditions by which the seasons are said to plunder living beings, giving medicine a helping role. Attested: ψύχει (976a). Medicine untimely seasons and conjectural help.

Conjectural practice — τοπάζειν (topazein)

τοπάζειν (topazein)

Conjectural practice. The helping practices are described as guessed at through opinions, grounding the Athenian’s denial of truest wisdom. Attested: τοπαζόμενα (976a). Medicine untimely seasons and conjectural help.

Untimely heat — καῦμα (kauma)

καῦμα (kauma)

Untimely heat. Heat, explicitly qualified as untimely, is one of the seasonal threats against which medicine helps. Attested: καύματι (976a). Medicine untimely seasons and conjectural help.

Medical assistance — βοήθεια (boētheia)

βοήθεια (boētheia)

Medical assistance. Medicine too is classified as help against damage from untimely seasonal conditions. Attested: βοήθεια (976a). Medicine untimely seasons and conjectural help.

Help under uncertainty — ἰατρικός (iatrikos)

ἰατρικός (iatrikos)

Help under uncertainty. The feminine substantivized form names medicine, useful against seasonal assaults but not credited with the truest wisdom. Attested: ἰατρικήν (976a). Medicine untimely seasons and conjectural help.

Metaphor of seasonal injury — ληίζεσθαι (lēizesthai)

ληίζεσθαι (lēizesthai)

Metaphor of seasonal injury. The seasons plunder living nature by harmful conditions. The image preserves vulnerability without specifying a modern disease mechanism. Attested: ληίζονται (976a). Medicine untimely seasons and conjectural help.

Untimely assault — ὥρα (hōra)

ὥρα (hōra)

Untimely assault. The seasons metaphorically plunder living nature through cold, untimely heat, and similar conditions. Attested: ὧραι (976a). Medicine untimely seasons and conjectural help.

Failure of fitting time — ἄκαιρος (akairos)

ἄκαιρος (akairos)

Failure of fitting time. The adjective qualifies heat in the medical example; its damaging character involves inappropriate timing, not heat as invariably evil. Attested: ἀκαίρῳ (976a). Medicine untimely seasons and conjectural help.

Use in the book

Medicine is labelled beneficial and good in the example at 217b. The body welcomes it because disease is present, while a healthy body has no need of it.

At 219a–c medicine is a friend for the sake of health, so it becomes the first clear example of a derivative object of affection in the regress. The word names the healing practice, not a drug or the doctor as a person. Those different medical nouns perform connected but distinct jobs in the analogy.

Places to read

1. 217bἰατρικὴ δὲ ὠφέλιμον καὶ ἀγαθόν — But medicine is beneficial and good.
2. 217a–b
3. 219a–c

Use in the book

The accusative plural ἰατρικούς describes what the Great King might suppose Socrates and Lysis to be. On that assumption he would allow them to treat his son’s eyes, because he believed them to understand correctly.

The word is adjectival here, not the feminine substantive ἰατρική used for the medical art elsewhere. The supposition is crucial: Socrates has not claimed that either speaker actually has medical training. This hypothetical competence explains the king’s permission without turning their imagined treatment into medical advice.

Places to read

1. 210aεἰ ὑπολαμβάνοι ἰατρικοὺς εἶναι — if he supposed us to be skilled in medicine.

Use in the book

The Hermetic account places medicine beside philosophy and magic in the comprehensive training of prophets. Philosophy and magic nourish the soul, while medicine preserves the suffering body. Their coordinated place in the curriculum does not make the three disciplines interchangeable.

Places to read

1. I.49.44.80Medicine preserves the body within a broader account of sacred training.
2. I.3.55b.2The physician’s care illustrates protective government.

Translation in this edition

“Medicine” is clear; “medical art” makes the relation to skilled practice explicit.

The physician as guardian

Iatros is a physician. In I.3.55b.2, physicians protecting bodies from diseases furnish one comparison for divine rulers, beside pilots, commanders, farmers, and herdsmen. The analogy highlights watchfulness and skilled care. It does not imply that the divine agents literally practice the same treatments as human doctors.

Use in the book

Love administering physic chooses balms and cordials rather than corrosives. The metaphor explains how the writer intends to advance the reader: an effective remedy should express care in its manner as well as in its end. Spiritual instruction is healing offered through delight.

A physician’s reputation also illustrates voluntary attraction. People seek the healer because they expect benefit, just as the soul should be drawn to the Cross by love and desire. The image depends on recognition of need and credible good, not force. In the autobiographical pursuit of knowledge, a secret in physic is investigated for its possible contribution to happiness.

Places to read

1. I.4Medicinal gentleness models the method of loving instruction.
2. I.57The sick person drawn by a physician’s reputation illustrates willing attraction.
3. III.25A secret in physic is tested for the happiness it may disclose.

In this edition

Physic in these contexts is medical. The list of university disciplines in III.36 separately names Physics and Medicine.

Use in the book

B146 names physicians among the last human roles before growth into divinity. Their inclusion gives healing an ethical and honorific prominence alongside seers, hymn-singers, and chieftains. B112 depicts men and women coming to the speaker after prolonged pain, hoping to hear a healing word. The verse emphasizes suffering, reputation, and the voice of the healer rather than clinical detail.

B1112 extends the claim of expertise to remedies against illness and old age, control of destructive weather, and leading a dead man's strength out of Hades. These promises illuminate the scope of the speaker's self-presentation, but do not supply demonstrations of efficacy. The introduction warns that later miracle biographies may be derived from such verses. A lexicon should accordingly explain the ancient claim without recommending Empedoclean procedures as contemporary treatment or presenting resurrection as an established historical achievement.

Places to read

1. B 146.1–3Physicians appear in the final human stage before divinity.
2. B 112.9–12The sick seek a healing word after prolonged suffering.
3. B 111.1–92The teacher promises remedies and extraordinary powers.
4. Introduction I (editorial discussion)The introduction distinguishes miracle stories from independent historical evidence.

Translation in this edition

“Healing word” is what the translation gives, not a record of a named drug or treatment. The fragment's claims remain literary and historical evidence about a healer's role.