Professional Documents
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by J am es Al le n (Pittsburgh)
The De causis procatarctis (CP) is one of a number of Galen’s works that survive
only in medieval Latin translations by Niccolò da Reggio. A version edited and
equipped with a Rückübersetzung by Kurt Bardong appeared in the Corpus medi-
corum graecorum in 1937 (Supp. vol. II). For his edition R. J. Hankinson (RJH)
has examined some of the manuscripts afresh, including one that Bardong seems
not to have known about (52 ff.). He provides an English translation instead of
his predecessor’s Rückübersetzung, and has supplied his edition with an extensive
introduction, a detailed commentary, indices, bibliographies and a comparative glos-
sary of Greek and Latin terms, which will help make the work available to a broader
audience while enhancing its usefulness to all its readers.
It emerges from Galen’s argument that something functions as a procatarctic
cause when, by acting on a body, it produces, or more typically sets in train a
sequence of causes and effects that produce, the condition of the body whose proca-
tarctic cause it is. Such causes precede their effects and may have ceased to act long
before the effects of which they are procatarctic causes come about. They cannot
bring about their effects alone, but depend on the cooperation of other factors; in
particular, the body on which they act must be predisposed to be so affected. Indeed
because the procatarctic cause does not bring the effect at issue about directly, it
may discharge its function in relation to a suitably disposed body and still fail to
bring about the effect of which it is the procatarctic cause if further necessary condi-
tions are not satisfied or timely preventive action is taken. And because so much
depends on the condition of the body acted upon and the cooperation of other causal
factors, the intensity of the effect, when it does come about, need not correspond to
the intensity of the influence exerted by the procatarctic cause. Galen’s favorite ex-
amples are the way in which, as he believes, heating, chilling and the like can give
rise to fevers.
I spoke of this account ‘emerging’ because Galen’s CP is not a treatise in which
procatarctic causation and related notions are systematically expounded, but is
rather an angry polemic. The objects of Galen’s ire are those physicians and philo-
believed them or judged it best to remain in doubt (I, 2⫺3). 1 This sounds very much
like Pyrrhonian suspension of judgement. As is well known, medical Empiricism had
close ties with Pyrrhonism, and Galen ascribes precisely this attitude to the medical
Empiricists later in the CP (XIII, 162). But who, then, originally put forward the
arguments branded sophisms by Galen? If the Pyrrhonists were the philosophical
counterparts of the Empiricists, they will have been required to suspend judgment
by their inability to refute arguments put to them by others. Or is it the Pyrrhonists
who have misled the Empiricists, perhaps including Empiricists philosophizing as
Pyrrhonists who have misled themselves? Certainly some of the arguments men-
tioned by Galen resemble those we find in Sextus Empiricus. But the motive Galen
ascribes to their authors ⫺ to win renown by overthrowing traditional and correct
views and replacing them with their own novel but false views ⫺ hardly agrees with
what we know of Pyrrhonism or Galen’s view of it. 2
Later in the CP Herophilus is said to have put forward arguments against causes
very much like those we find in Sextus Empiricus (XVI, 197 ff.; cf. RJH 272 ff.). This
passage throws valuable light on possible medical influences on early Pyrrhonism,
but Herophilus can hardly be one of the villains of the first section. For according
to Galen, Herophilus argues in this way to cast doubt on causes, but then goes on
to use causes all the same because most people think there are causes. To be sure,
Galen, who dismisses this as a feeble excuse, fails to understand the rather subtle
position which Herophilus takes here, which permits appeal to causes ‘ex supposi-
tione’, but does not pretend that the causes it uses enjoy the incontrovertible support
of reason (cf. RJH 271). It is a pity that Galen is prevented by incomprehension
from saying more about this extremely interesting position. Nonetheless it is plain
that neither Herophilus’ real position nor the timidity of which Galen accuses him
can be reconciled with the motive Galen ascribes to the unnamed opponents of the
first section.
In the second polemical section, Galen directs his fire against ‘another species of
sophist who act shamelessly toward the procatarctic cause’, whose chief is Erasistra-
tus (VIII, 96 ff.; 102). We are in a better position to assess the merits of Galen’s
charges this time not only because he names his opponent but because he puts in
evidence a quotation and a paraphrase from Erasistratus.
It is not entirely clear what Galen means by shameful treatment of the procatarc-
tic cause. Elsewhere he says that Erasistratus argues against such causes or wants to
do away with them as falsely believed in (IX, 123; XIII, 162; cf. 169), but he fails to
distinguish between different kinds of argument with different objects that might be
fairly described as ‘against the procatartic cause’.
(a) Arguments that items exerting the kind of influence specified in the account
of the procatarctic cause cannot be causes because they lack features that are
essential to causes properly so called.
(b) Arguments that there are no items exerting this kind of influence regardless
of whether it would be right to style them causes if there were.
(c) Arguments that the items commonly supposed or alleged by a theory to exert
procatarctic causal influence do not in fact do so.
Galen had little patience with arguments of the first kind. Witness his attitude
toward those people who, he maintains, do not deny that cold, heat, overeating and
the like harm, only that they are causes of harm (VI, 46; cf. I, 10). As he never tires
of observing, it is not words that matter, but what they mean; if some people, for
whatever perverse reasons, prefer to withhold the term ‘cause’ from procatarctic
causes, he is willing to accommodate them so long as they acknowledge the fact of
procatarctic causation, however designated. And arguments of type (a) do not com-
mit one either to denying that there are items exerting the kind of influence ascribed
to the procatarctic cause ⫺ falsely so called ⫺ or to rejecting any particular view
about what they might be.
The burden of Galen’s argument ⫺ though he nowhere puts the matter so clear-
ly ⫺ is that Erasistratus advances considerations that would, at best, support an
argument of the first kind as if they entitle him to a conclusion of the second or
third type. This, I take it, is what he means by his charge that Erasistratus’ writings
against procatarctic causes, (as he ⫺ Galen ⫺ describes them) owe their plausibility
to an alteration in the meaning of words (XIII, 166; cf. 172, 175). Thus in order to
evaluate the justice of Galen’s charges we must answer two questions.
(i) Did Erasistratus deny, either implicitly or explicitly, the legitimacy of a con-
cept of procatarctic causation and restrict the use of the term ‘cause’ accord-
ingly?
(ii) If he did, did he use this restriction to evade the substantive question whether
so-called procatarctic causes, including those favored by Galen, play the part
they are alleged to play in the origin of disease?
The first quotation from Erasistratus begins (VIII, 102):
Most people both now and earlier have sought the causes of fevers by wishing to
hear (audire) and learn (discere) from the ill whether their illness had its origin
in being chilled or exhausted or in repletion or some other cause of this kind, in
this way neither truly (vere) nor profitably (conferenter) investigating the causes
of disease.
I have departed from RJH’s translation at two points in particular. First, I have
rendered ‘audire’ as ‘hear’ rather than ‘ascertain’. That Galen understands the pas-
sage in this way is strongly suggested by his later remark that, when recounting their
own experiences, lay people remember that labor, heat and that sort of thing are
accustomed to ignite (accendere) fevers (XI, 143). In other words, Galen believes
that lay people are often capable of identifying the causes of their own fevers. Indeed,
as we shall see, Galen believes that the causal influence exerted by some procatarctic
causes is manifestly evident. Secondly, I have also preferred a more literal rendering
of the last phrase in the above citation to RJH’s: “but this type of inquiry yields
results that are neither true nor useful” 3. I take it that Erasistratus means to say
that this is not the correct method of investigating causes or the right way to look
for an explanation.
If we pause here, there seems to be nothing especially shameless about this. But
the best evidence for Galen’s charge is furnished by the remark Erasistratus immedi-
ately goes on to make (103):
For if cold were a cause of fever, 4 then those who have been chilled the more
would suffer the greater fever. But this is not what happens: rather there are some
who have faced extreme danger from freezing, and when rescued have remained
unaffected by fever. The same thing happens in regard to exhaustion and reple-
tion: many people who experience far worse exhaustion and repletion than when
some people have come down with a fever 5 none the less escape the illness. 6
To proponents of procatarctic causation like Galen this must seem to beg the
question. They never claimed as much for the items mentioned here, yet they main-
tain that they have a part to play in bringing about fever all the same and are, for
that reason, properly styled ‘causes’, a position which seems to be left untouched by
Erasistratus’ remarks.
But we do not know the immediate context of this quotation, and it is not hard
to imagine one that would support a more charitable reading than Galen’s. If, as I
have suggested, Erasistratus is principally concerned to complain about a defective
method of explanation, it may be enough to suppose that Erasistratus thinks the
people about whom he is complaining fail to explain why fevers arise when they do
and exhibit the variations that they do. If we suppose that these people are not
proponents of a sophisticated causal theory of the kind espoused by Galen, but
physicians who he ⫺ Erasistratus ⫺ thinks ⫺ rely on lay testimony about fevers and
are content to leave matters at that, there are a number of points he could be making
in this way. In the context I have imagined, it may even be that Erasistratus meant
that it was as if the people he criticizes make heating and chilling the sole causes or
complete explanation of the fevers alleged to result from them because they say
nothing that would explain why causes of this sort, e. g., chilling, sometimes result
in fever and sometimes do not and why the fevers that result are sometimes stronger
sometimes weaker. His point would then be very similar to the one that Galen thinks
he is scoring against Erasistratus with his charge that his ⫺ Erasistratus’ ⫺ argu-
7 “Galen seems to believe that one can actually feel causal connections as opposed
to inferring them” (RJH 251).
are chilled and that some of them later come down with a fever, but that, on certain
occasions, chilling causes people to come down with a fever. But of course it is far
from clear that facts like these are as evident as Galen maintains, and there are real
dangers in postulating underlying dispositions that would save allegedly phenomenal
procatarctic causes by explaining variations in their effects. 8
We shall have to see whether the remaining evidence supports these suggestions.
But even if they are too charitable and Galen was right to attribute a restrictive
conception of cause to Erasistratus (questions i), if his charges are to be vindicated
it must still be established that Erasistratus denied causal influence, under whatever
name, to the so-called procatarctic causes and did so by altering the meaning of the
word ‘cause’ (question ii). And the evidence for this charge is still weaker.
After all the abuse heaped upon Erasistratus’ disgraceful behavior toward proca-
tarctic causes, it comes as a surprise to find Soranus crediting Erasistratus with the
view that plethora is a procatarctic cause of disease (Gyn. 3.4). Of course, this need
not mean that Erasistratus used the term ‘procatarctic cause’, only that he ascribed
the kind of causal influence to plethora that entitles it to be called a procatarctic
cause and that would lead those familiar with the term to call it a procatarctic cause
(cf. RJH 47). What is more, Galen himself seems to accept as much in his paraphrase
of another passage from Erasistratus (XIV, 174).
For he says something along these lines: ‘This much, namely that there would
not be a proximate cause of disease had something first not brought about some-
thing else, and then that something else again, no one disputes. Congestion in the
veins must therefore follow repletion from things that have been eaten and drunk
and paremptosis (i. e. falling to the arteries) occurs because of this … and because
of this the heart changes the pneuma more powerfully and rapidly, which invaria-
bly propels the displaced blood and forces it to the edges of the arteries, where it
is compressed and forms an inflammation. So it is clear that paremptosis occurs
by way of plethora, and then compression occurs.
It is clear from this that Erasistratus does find a place for repletion as a necessary
condition for, though not the proximate cause of, disease; the part of proximate
cause is reserved for paremptosis, the displacement of blood from the veins, where
it belongs, into the arteries, which according to Erasistratean physiology are vessels
for the pneuma. The context seems to be one in which Erasistratus was concerned
to emphasize the importance of proximate causes. And it may be that paremptosis
satisfied the requirements that Galen takes Erasistratus to be imposing on causes in
the first quotation. Soranus, in the passage already cited, maintains that Erasistratus
makes paremptosis the containing cause of disease. The containing cause was origi-
nally a Stoic notion, but once introduced into medicine by Athenaueus of Attaleia,
the founder of the pneumatic school, it led an independent life there (cf.
RJH 43⫺45). And at least in its medical version, the containing cause did behave in
something like the required way. Thus the evidence does suggest that Erasistratus
“Erasistratus further holds that heat and cold cannot be causes of illness”, I take it
because they do not satisfy the conditions that Erasistratus is alleged to impose on
causes in the first quotation (33). He remarks that Erasistratus wins a purely hollow
verbal victory by means of arguments based on those conditions (256). He describes
“as of the Erasistratean type” the parodic courtroom argument constructed by Ga-
len, in which a prizefighter argues that he is not the cause of an old woman’s death
because the blow he dealt her was no stronger than many blows he had received and
dealt out in the ring without death ensuing (247). And he describes the Erasistratean
approach as untenable because it sidesteps issues of assigning causal responsibility
by stipulation (265). According to RJH, the CP demolishes the ‘conceptual basis’
for the rejection of procatarctic causes (48).
As should be plain by now, I do not believe that Erasistratus’ views had a concep-
tual basis of the kind alleged. He rejects the procatarctic causes favored by Galen
on substantive grounds that have everything to do with his preferred pathology and
little or nothing to do with a theory of causation or a view about the meaning of
the word ‘cause’. Everything Erasistratus says about causes can be explained by
reference to his substantive views and facts about the ordinary use of the term
‘cause’. If this is right, the CP is an example, though far from the only one, of
Galen’s unfairness as a reader of others’ works. 10 We have good reasons to be very
cautious about relying on Galen’s testimony. In particular, I suspect, we have very
little reason to suppose that the kind of sophistical logic chopping with which the
CP is concerned played a significant part in Erasistratean medicine.
The alternative interpretation that I have defended here is of course very heavily
indebted to RJH’s presentation of the evidence in his extremely helpful volume, for
which students of ancient philosophy and medicine should be very grateful.