Plato, The Republic, on medical obsessions
Plato seems to have understood all there is to understand 2400 years ago. (tr. Reeve 2005, sec. 405a-408b)
GLAUCON: How could it be otherwise?
SOCRATES: Could you find better evidence that a city’s
education is in a bad and shameful state than when eminent doctors and lawyers
are needed, not only by inferior people and handicraftsmen, but by those who
claim to have been brought up in the manner of free men? Indeed, don’t you
think it is shameful and strong evidence of lack of education to be forced to
make use of a corrective imposed by others, as if they were one’s
masters and judges, because one lacks such qualities oneself?
GLAUCON: That is the most shameful thing of all.
SOCRATES: Do you really think so? Isn’t it even more shameful
not just to spend a good part of one’s life in court defending oneself and
prosecuting someone else, but to be so vulgar that one is persuaded to take
pride in this and regard oneself as amazingly clever at doing injustice, and as
so accomplished at every trick and turn that one can wiggle through any
loophole, and avoid punishment—and to do all that for the sake of little
worthless things, and because one is ignorant of how much better and finer it
is to arrange one’s own life so that one won’t need to find a judge who is asleep?
GLAUCON: Yes, that is even more shameful.
SOCRATES: What about needing the craft of medicine for
something besides wounds or some seasonal illnesses? What about needing it
because idleness and the regimen we described has filled one full of gasses and
phlegm, like a stagnant swamp, so that sophisticated Asclepiad doctors are forced to come up
with names like “flatulence” and “catarrh” to describe one’s diseases?
Don’t you think that is shameful?
GLAUCON: Yes, it is; and those truly are strange new names
for diseases.
SOCRATES: And of a sort that I do not imagine even existed in
the time of Asclepius himself. My evidence for this is that his sons at Troy
did not criticize the woman who treated the wounded Eurypylus with Pramneian wine
that had lots of barley meal and grated cheese sprinkled on it, even though
such treatment is now thought to cause inflammation. Moreover, they did not
criticize Patroclus, who prescribed the treatment.
GLAUCON: Yet, surely it was a strange drink for someone in
that condition.
SOCRATES: Not if you recall that the sort of modern medicine
that coddles the disease was not used by the Asclepiads before the time of
Herodicus. Herodicus was a physical trainer who became ill and, through a combination
of physical training and medicine, tormented first and foremost himself, and
then lots of other people as well.
GLAUCON: How did he do that?
SOCRATES: By making his death a lengthy process. You see,
although he was always tending his illness, he was not able to cure it, since
it was terminal. And so he spent his life under medical treatment, with no free
time for anything else whatsoever. He suffered torments if he departed even a
little from his accustomed regimen; but, thanks to his wisdom, he struggled
against death and reached old age.
GLAUCON: A fine reward for his craft that was!
SOCRATES: And appropriate for someone who did not know that it
was not because of ignorance or inexperience of this kind of medicine that Asclepius
failed to teach it to his sons, but because he knew that everyone in a
well-regulated city has his own work to do, and that no one has the time to be
ill and under treatment all his life. We see how ridiculous this would be in
the case of craftsmen, but we do not see it in the case of those who are
supposedly happy—the rich.
GLAUCON: What do you mean?
SOCRATES: When a carpenter is ill, he expects to get a drug
from his doctor that will make him throw up what is making him sick or evacuate
it through his bowels; or to get rid of his disease through surgery or cautery.
If anyone prescribes a lengthy regimen for him and tells him that he should rest
with his head bandaged and so on, he quickly replies that he has no time to be
ill, and that it is not profitable for him to live like that, always minding
his illness and neglecting the work at hand. After that, he says goodbye to his
doctor, resumes his usual regimen, lives doing his own job, and recovers his
health; alternatively, if his body cannot withstand the illness, he dies and
escapes his troubles.
GLAUCON: That does seem to be the correct way for someone
like that to use the craft of medicine.
SOCRATES: Isn’t that because he had a job to do, and that if
he could not do it, it would not profit him to go on living?
GLAUCON: Clearly.
SOCRATES: But a rich person, it is said, has no job assigned
to him of the sort that would make his life not worth living if he had to keep
away from it.
GLAUCON: So it is said, at least.
SOCRATES: What, have you not heard the saying of Phocylides
that once one has the means of life, one must practice virtue?
GLAUCON: And even earlier, in my view.
SOCRATES: Let’s not quarrel with him about that. But let’s try
to find out for ourselves whether this virtue is something a rich person must
practice, and if his life is not worth living if he does not practice it; or
whether nursing an illness, while an
obstacle to putting your mind to carpentry and other crafts, is no obstacle
whatever to taking Phocylides’ advice.
GLAUCON: But, by Zeus, it is: excessive care of the body that
goes beyond simple physical training is pretty much the biggest obstacle of
all. For it’s a nuisance in household management, in military service, and even
in sedentary political office.
SOCRATES: And most important of all, surely, is that it makes
any sort of learning, thought, or private meditation difficult, by forever
causing imaginary headaches or dizziness and accusing philosophy of causing
them. Hence, wherever this sort of virtue is practiced and submitted to
philosophical scrutiny, excessive care of the body hinders it. For it is
constantly making you imagine that you are ill and never lets you stop
agonizing about your body.
GLAUCON: Yes, probably so.
SOCRATES: Then won’t we say that Asclepius knew this, too, and
that he invented the craft of medicine for people whose bodies are healthy in nature
and habit, but have some specific disease in them? That is the type of person
and condition for which he invented it. He rid them of their disease by means
of drugs or surgery, and then prescribed their normal regimen, so that affairs
of politics would not be harmed. However, he did not attempt to prescribe
regimens for those whose bodies were riddled with disease, so that by drawing
off a little here and pouring in a little there, he could make their life a prolonged
misery and enable them to produce offspring in all probability like themselves.
He did not think that he should treat someone who could not live a normal life,
since such a person would profit neither himself nor his city.
GLAUCON: Asclepius was a true man of politics, in your view.
SOCRATES: Clearly so. And it was because he was like that,
don’t you see, that his sons, too, turned out to be good men in the war at
Troy, and practiced the craft of medicine as I say they did. Don’t you remember
that they “sucked out the blood and applied gentle drugs” to the wound Pandarus
inflicted on Menelaus? But they no more prescribed what he should eat or drink
after that than they did for Eurypylus? That was because they assumed that their drugs were
sufficient to cure men who were healthy and living an orderly life before being
wounded, even if they happened to drink wine mixed with barley and cheese right
afterward. But they thought that the lives of naturally sick and intemperate
people were profitable neither to themselves nor to anyone else, that the craft
of medicine shouldn’t be practiced on them, and that they should not be given
treatment, not even if they were richer than Midas.
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