The Fragments of the Methodists (review)

In chapters 6 to 9 of On the Sects for Beginners (Kühn 1.79–105), Galen gives an outline of the medical doctrine of the Methodists—the third sect or school (Gr. haíresis) of medicine, after the dogmatics and the empirics. The Methodists, he argues, do not believe in complex causation, but rather explain all diseases in terms of so-called communities (koinótēs—i.e., states of the body), of which there are only three—flux (rhúsis), constriction (stégnōsis), and a mixture of these two (epiplokḗ)—wherefore medicine can be learned within six months. Because of the great popularity of Galen's text, this polemical description of Methodism has to this day been predominant in the historiography of ancient Greek medicine. With Fragments of the Methodists, Manuela Tecusan sets out to challenge Galen's hostile depiction and to reassess the contribution of the Methodists to the development of medical theory and practice. The task before her is of Herculean dimensions: to assemble all the references to Methodists in classical Greek and Latin literature, to translate them into English, to discuss them in their context, and to ferret out from these widely dispersed fragments a coherent and diachronic picture of the development of Methodism.

Because of the sheer size and the varying nature of her sources, Tecusan sensibly decided to divide her task into smaller units. In this first volume of the Fragments, she collects and translates all the Greek and Latin fragments by Methodist physicians to the exclusion of Soranus. The second volume will contain a commentary to the fragments collected in the first, and will also include a general discussion of Methodism. "Soranus' fragments," she says (p. 25), "are to be collected and analysed in a 'companion' (third) volume."

Volume 1 is organized in the following fashion. In an introduction (pp. 1–43), Tecusan discusses some of the methodological problems inherent in the reconstruction of Methodist medical theory from accounts that are largely hostile; Galen, after all, does constitute the single largest source (approximately 300 out of a total of 700 pages in her collection of the fragments) and influenced many later medical writers heavily in their appreciation of Methodism. She also gives a brief historical sketch of the most eminent Methodists known by name, such as Thessalus and Themison. Her collection of fragments, as she explains (pp. 41– 43), is largely based on already-existing editions; only rarely was it possible for her to inspect the manuscripts herself, although she arrogates to herself the right to conjecture. The introduction is followed by an appendix listing all the dubia possibly to be attributed to different Methodist physicians (pp. 45–67); a "List of Fragments and Their Sources," which is, so to speak, a table of contents for the collection of fragments (pp. 69–80); a "Thematic Synopsis," which constitutes an index to general subjects and to persons (pp. 81–106); a "List of Methodist Works" (pp. 107–9); and finally a short bibliography of the main sources (pp. 111–15). The fragments (pp. 117–813) are arranged alphabetically according to the author of the source. A list of "Ancient Weights and Measures" concludes the volume.

Given that the general discussion as well as the commentary to the individual fragments has not yet appeared as I write (April 2005), it is difficult to give a critical appraisal of Tecusan's scholarship. Her translations are decidedly idiomatic and read extremely well, although at times my own understanding of the text is different from hers (e.g., p. 538, 3: φασ κόντων goes with and not with Μεθοδικοί), but this is only to be expected. In the absence of her commentary it is sometimes difficult to understand why she made certain conjectures (e.g., p. 404, 14: κᾷν [sic] instead of καὶ), yet she will probably address these issues in the commentary. Tecusan is absolutely justified to base her collection...