The Fragments of the Methodists. Volume One: Methodism Outside Soranus (review)

The Methodism that forms the subject of this large and useful book is a stream of ancient medicine extremely influential in its day but little studied and poorly understood by modern scholars. Methodism originated in the first century B.C.E. at a time when medical thinking was dominated by the Empiricist school, and continued to exist well into the second century C.E. The Methodists departed from contemporary practice in startling ways. For example, they denied ailments the status of independent entities and ascribed them to excesses and interrelations of two basic states (the lax and the constricted); this in turn led them to a new use of pharmacology, selecting substances for their ability to relax or constrict; they also dispensed with the theory of the four humors.

Prior to Tecusan's work, study of Methodism was beset by serious difficulties. First, though its exponents were prolific writers, their works are all lost (except some of those of Soranus). Accordingly, knowledge of them has to be gleaned from references scattered through the writings of numerous ancient authors. Such references are what Tecusan calls "fragments," the word carrying no implication that the relevant documents are in a physically fragmentary state. (In classical studies, a distinction is traditionally made between "fragments" and "testimonials," a fragment being a passage in which an author is cited more or less verbatim, a testimonial is one in which something is said about him. Tecusan's fragments also include testimonials). A second, more serious and insidious hindrance to healthy study of Methodism is that the writers who mention Methodists are largely hostile to them. This is especially true of Galen (born 129 C.E.), who deeply resented contemporary Methodists' success at the Roman court and constantly sought to belittle them.

Tecusan's work is designed specifically to overcome these difficulties and others and promises to set modern understanding of Methodism on a new footing. In this first volume, she has gathered all the fragments of all identifiable Methodists except Soranus, presenting the texts in the original language (Latin or Greek) and English translation (her own) on facing pages. Over two-thirds of the fragments were culled from the writings of Galen, but the net was cast widely to include all classical authors and papyri. Later sources whose treatment of the Methodists is repetitive and derivative have been included more sparingly (which is fair enough). The sources are edited with annotations of significant variants and possible emendations, the latter including several new suggestions. Special praise is due to the decision to provide many of the fragments with a sizable chunk of context, so that one can see how mention of Methodism fits into the train of the host source's thought and arguments. Thus the body of the work assembles the necessary foundation for serious study: a philologically accurate collection and translation of the available evidence. The book also includes a sixty-seven-page introduction, which briefly introduces Methodism, outlines the challenges posed by the ancient sources, explains the principles followed by the author (e.g., in dealing with the tricky questions of prosopography), and offers a very useful thematic synopsis that facilitates consultation.

The volume under review already represents a sizable contribution, but this is only the beginning. The second volume (forthcoming) will include an extensive commentary on the texts collected in the first thematic discussions and a glossary of materia medica. It is eagerly awaited and confidently expected to effect a dramatic rise in the profile of Methodism within the history of medicine. A further volume (also forthcoming) will deal with Soranus (p. 25). When complete, Tecusan's collection of and commentary on fragments will sit well in an illustrious tradition—the classic example of a work of this type, Jacoby's Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (Berlin: Leiden, 1923), was the most important work on Greek history produced in the twentieth century!

The title of Tecusan's book will put many readers in mind of...