Aristotle, Aristotelianism and Ancient Medicine
This book project describes and analyses a dialogue between philosophers and doctors as it took place in the Graeco-Roman world; a dialogue about what they can learn from each other on themes such as life and living beings, body and soul, health and disease, and where they differ, converge or overlap in method and subject matter.
The book covers the history of this dialogue from the fourth century BCE to the sixth century CE. The philosophers discussed are Aristotle and members of his school, the Peripatos, as well as commentators on Aristotle’s writings from Late Antiquity. The medical protagonists are the chief physicians of the Classical and Hellenistic periods, the Imperial doctor Galen of Pergamum and the sixth century CE medical professor and Hippocratic commentator Stephanus of Alexandria.
One of the book’s central aims is to clarify the role which Aristotle, and thinkers in the Aristotelian tradition, have played in the history of ancient medicine. A further aim is to show how Aristotle’s philosophy itself, and the way it was elaborated and interpreted by its advocates and exegetes, was influenced by its engagement with medical theory and practice. This has never been attempted on this scale and to this degree of detail.
The book argues that Aristotle was well aware of the medical ideas of his time and that he strategically positioned himself within ongoing debates about health and disease, to which he made important and innovative contributions, drawing on his own work – empirical as well as theoretical – in comparative biology, philosophy of science and ethics. Aristotle provided a philosophical grounding for medical theory and practice, with the purpose of making healthcare more scientific and more effective at the same time, thus providing the best possible conditions for members of human communities to realise their potential and achieve happiness and flourishing. In particular, Aristotle made serious efforts to enable doctors to apply his biological ideas to their diagnostic and therapeutic practice by showing the clinical relevance of his scientific findings.
This ‘biomedical’ project was continued by his Peripatetic successors, and Aristotelian thought had an enormous impact on medical writers of the Hellenistic and Imperial period. At the same time, engagement with post-Aristotelian medical ideas profoundly influenced the work of the Peripatetic school and the interpretation of Aristotle’s works in Late Antiquity.
The book not only discusses major figures such as Aristotle and Galen but also less well studied thinkers, and it uncovers new, unpublished evidence for engagement with medical themes in the Aristotelian tradition.
This book is of interest – and accessible – to a variety of audiences, consisting of historians of medicine and science, Aristotelian scholars and students of the Graeco-Roman world, but also to readers with a medical background and to a wider audience interested in the history of ideas about health, disease and the body and their relationship to the soul, life and quality of life.
The book is currently in production with Cambridge University Press and is scheduled to be published in September 2026.
Link to the publisher's website
Additional Resources
Additional resources for the study of Aristotle’s ideas on health and disease (referred to in the book, ch. 1, n. 7) can be found here; and further material on Theophrastus’ account of the medicinal effects of plants (referred to in the book, ch. 14, n. 24) can be found here.