Sudhoffs Arch Z Wissenschaftsgesch. 1991 ; 75(2): 209-39.

[Plinius and Greek physicians in Rome: the concept of nature and medical critique in Naturalis Historia]

Hahn J.

Universität Heidelberg.

Pliny's historical outline of the development of medicine, in Natural History 29.1-27, is our primary source concerning the reception of scientific medicine at Rome during the later Republic and early Empire. Here, as elsewhere, Pliny handles Greek doctors and their medical practices with vehement disapproval. But this attitude, at first glance anti-Hellene, traditionalistic, and critical of his coevals, arises from more deeply rooted notions: a specific conception of nature which can be shown to be the basis of Pliny's critique of medicine and his own times. Reconstruction of this "Plinean" conception reveals a view of nature marked by Stoic terminology and categories, though in fact derivate from various sources, idiosyncratic and characterized by a genuine love of and respect for nature and her creations. True comprehension of the lessons offered by nature, resulting in concrete mores of behaviour and moral categories, as opposed to theory and speculation, is the proper modus operandi for Pliny. And thus, with regard to the human process of self-discovery in the natural world, medicine plays a decisive role--for providential nature displays herself most clearly in the production of healing substances. Pliny notes among the proponents of scientific medicine, a general disregard for nature and her rules, while he finds just the opposite in traditional medicine. His own accomplishment resides not only in the safeguarding of numberless recipies from the world of folk medicine, but also in the facts that he under-pins these traditional methods of healing, and their basic principles, with a specific conception of nature, and that he marks out an exceptionally important place for traditional methods of healing in the canon of general knowledge.