Hippocratic Holisms

Abstract

The aim of this essay is to identify three different pre-Platonic forms of holism: the ‘therapeutic’, the ‘environmental’, and the ‘cosmic.’ With the help of passages from the Hippocratic On the Nature of Man , On Regimen , and On Sevens , on the one hand, and from Plato, the earliest independent authority on the holistic nature of Hippocratic medicine, on the other, I make the case that all three forms of holism play significant roles in dietetic medicine, that they are complementary, and that aspects of them can even be combined into a single account.