The fifth book of the Hippocratic Aphorisms represents an important source for the history of ancient gynecology: exactly the half of this book (thirty-six of its seventy-two aphorisms) is concerned with gynecological problems. Some aphorisms (especially Aph. V 59, 62 and 63) deal with obstacles to pregnancy and sterility of women and/or men. The aim of this paper is to investigate how Galen understood and explained these aphorisms, whose interpretation covers a very long section of his Commentary on the Hippocratic Aphorisms. In these pages of Galen’s Commentary, we find very interesting observations both on the medical content and on philological problems raised from the Hippocratic text. On the one hand, Galen explains female infertility according to his own theory of mixture (κρᾶσις) and refers to the figure of the midwife, as Plato described her in the Theaetetus, for diagnosing it. On the other hand, he has to deal with the inconsistency of Aph. V 63 on male sterility, the authenticity of which is questioned on account of some incoherencies Galen detects in the alleged Hippocratic text.
Galen on Infertility in the Commentary on the Hippocratic Aphorisms, Book 5 / Ecca, Giulia. - In: I QUADERNI DEL RAMO D'ORO. - ISSN 2035-7524. - 12:(2020).
Galen on Infertility in the Commentary on the Hippocratic Aphorisms, Book 5
Giulia EccaPrimo
2020
Abstract
The fifth book of the Hippocratic Aphorisms represents an important source for the history of ancient gynecology: exactly the half of this book (thirty-six of its seventy-two aphorisms) is concerned with gynecological problems. Some aphorisms (especially Aph. V 59, 62 and 63) deal with obstacles to pregnancy and sterility of women and/or men. The aim of this paper is to investigate how Galen understood and explained these aphorisms, whose interpretation covers a very long section of his Commentary on the Hippocratic Aphorisms. In these pages of Galen’s Commentary, we find very interesting observations both on the medical content and on philological problems raised from the Hippocratic text. On the one hand, Galen explains female infertility according to his own theory of mixture (κρᾶσις) and refers to the figure of the midwife, as Plato described her in the Theaetetus, for diagnosing it. On the other hand, he has to deal with the inconsistency of Aph. V 63 on male sterility, the authenticity of which is questioned on account of some incoherencies Galen detects in the alleged Hippocratic text.File | Dimensione | Formato | |
---|---|---|---|
Ecca_Galen_2020.pdf
accesso aperto
Tipologia:
Documento in Post-print (versione successiva alla peer review e accettata per la pubblicazione)
Licenza:
Creative commons
Dimensione
904.84 kB
Formato
Adobe PDF
|
904.84 kB | Adobe PDF |
I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.