ABOUT BOOK

To summarise our findings, the Hippocratic Epidemics case reports is an example of a text whose intended audiences, despite the ambiguities and historical ~uncertainties about the texts’ composition and transmission, were very firmly ~delimited as professional and medical. Such closure defines this phase of ancient ~medicine as particularly territorial and “technical”, on the one hand – no literary ~pretence, nor broader intellectual appeal of the kind shown by Galen is on the ~horizon of these writers, nor any explicit attempt to win over lay audiences, at ~least in the Epidemics.77 Also, it tells us something about the epistemology and ~didactics at work in the Hippocratic handling of patients, which we can summarise ~as follows: non-theoretical, observation-based and data-centred; self-standing, ~i.e. not relying on a system of knowledge or a “syllabus” (compare Galen’s ~frequent recommendation on which of his books one should read first, which are ~for beginners, what should follow, etc.), but needing to “support itself” by insuring ~the memorisation of the repertoires of observations, procedures, risks and ~mistakes; lack of a synthesis of the empirical data, such as a form of diagnosis, ~or of the “epistemological extension” that might turn the observed case into an ~“experiment”.78 The Hippocratic use of individual evidence – the patient case – ~remained in this early stage a communication of pure data. Individual memory, ~in conclusion, the reception of an individual intellect – a future student, a training ~doctor – characterises the audience of these texts, motivates and even determines, ~concretely, their very existence.