Littre, IV, 628.)
In his ideal republic, Plato put the physician low enough, in the last
stratum, indeed, but he has never been more honorably placed than in
the picture of Athenian society given by this author in the "Symposium."
Here the physician is shown as a cultivated gentleman, mixing in the
best, if not always the most sober, society. Eryximachus, the son of
Acumenus, himself a physician, plays in this famous scene a typical
Greek part(22a)--a strong advocate of temperance in mind and body,
deprecating, as a physician, excess in drink, he urged that conversation
should be the order of the day and he had the honor of naming the
subject--"Praise of the God of Love." Incidentally Eryximachus gives his
view of the nature of disease, and shows how deeply he was influenced by
the views of Empedocles:". . . so too in the body the good and healthy
elements are to be indulged, and the bad elements and the elements of
disease are not to be indulged, but discouraged. And this is what the
physician has to do, and in this the art of medicine consists: for
medicine may be regarded generally as the knowledge of the loves
and desires of the body and how to satisfy them or not; and the best
physician is he who is able to separate fair love from foul, or to
convert one into the other; and he who knows how to eradicate and how to
implant love, whichever is required, and can reconcile the most hostile
elements in the constitution and make them loving friends, is a skilful
practitioner.
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