The Symptom and the Subject: The Emergence of the Physical Body in Ancient Greece

Abstract

This study by Brooke Holmes is a revised version of the author's doctoral thesis, completed under the supervision of Froma Zeitlin and Heinrich von Staden, and it represents a rather unusual blend of the interests of both her mentors. The reader will find abundant discussions of both Greek medical literature and Greek Drama, and visible traces of semiotic theories, of which Zeitlin was a fervent proponent in the 1980s. The primary objective of this book is to study the emergence of the physical body as a concept, and in order to achieve this goal, the author researches a selection of Hippocratic studies, as well as other contemporary authors in the late fifth or early fourth century, most notably Greek Drama and Plato. The first chapter searches through the Homeric poems for features which later would be attributed to the physical body. The second chapter discusses natural inquiry in presocratic philosophy and its influence on theories of the body in rational medicine. In Chapter 3, the author discusses medical theories about the physical body, especially its perception as a mysterious cavity inviting research into its secrets. Chapter 4 introduces the vital force in connection to physis (nature), while Chapter 5 explores the relation between physis and psyche (soul). The final chapter researches these topics in Greek Drama, with emphasis on Euripides. The author's conclusion that the physical body in the fifth century became a conceptual object which assumed and converted into natural processes many powers and qualities, which until the time of rational medicine belonged to the realm of the divine or the supernatural, is well argued and convincing.

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