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. 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.
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. Roman doctors dedicate themselves to a public hygiene, prudently systematizing practice and concrete knowledge of other cultures. 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. Pozzolanic mortar had a high content of alumina and silica. 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. Pozzolana makes the concrete more resistant to salt water than modern-day concrete. Here, as elsewhere, Pliny handles Greek doctors and their medical practices with vehement disapproval. 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.
0 kommentar(er)
