This is a valuable book, among whose merits is a well-argued ‘speculation’ (p. 213) that the Hippocratic author's understanding of psyche is based on the transmigration of souls, a concept like Plato's, which may derive from Pythagorean and Orphic thought, but which is applied to birth and the embodied life rather than Plato's focus on the soul's escape from the body in death.
Regimen 1–4, despite being one of the longest Hippocratic treatises, has not been treated well. Galen (On the Powers of Foods 1.1) thought the first book unworthy of Hippocrates, but was better disposed to the second. B. (pp. 4–5), noting dismissive comments by G. Kirk (‘an uninventive compiler’ who occasionally ‘simply did not know what he meant’) and J. Barnes (‘a silly farrago of ill-digested Presocratic opinions’), counsels, less grandly, further thought rather than rejection of what may seem strange. His claim (p. 8) is tripartite and ambitious, bringing the treatise into the mainstream of later fifth-century thought: the author uses some of the most important philosophical ideas of the period; has one of the best-articulated accounts of the analogy between macrocosm and microcosm, as also of physis; and provides ‘the most profoundly-elaborated’ account before Plato of how body and soul relate. B. addresses both ‘philosophy’ and ‘medical history’ in his study of ancient medicine, following T. Tracy's Physiological Theory and the Doctrine of the Mean in Plato and Aristotle (1969), which sets out the biological basis of much philosophical thought. B. switches the emphasis to medical texts, a welcome shift since medical historians such as E. Craik (Hippocratic Corpus [2015]) see the work as organic and coherent, and the philosophers now need to reconsider, as indeed ‘philosophers’ within ‘medicine’ such as P. van der Eijk have done. B. claims the author's impact on the thought of both Plato and Aristotle, persuasively, I think.
The first chapter surveys the development of dietetics in the early Hippocratic texts well. Of the pre-Hippocratic period I am not so sure. Following G. Wöhrle (Gesundheitslehre [1990]), B. (p. 17) finds no hygieia in Homer. (I disagree: restoration of strength to weary warriors with food and drink mixed in a kykeôn and of mental pleasure with mythoi in Iliad 11.618–44 and elsewhere seems to anticipate Mnesitheus, fr. 41 Bertier, and Galen on kopos [‘fatigue’] in De sanitate tuenda 4.) B., with Wöhrle, allows the presence of good health in Archaic literature such as Simonides, fr. 604 Page, and Pindar, Pythian 3.73: Hygieia is a goddess by 400 b.c. in Ariphron. This textual evidence, however, including Solon, fr. 13.62 West (add the scholia), draws on deep cultural traditions. We should at least ask ourselves whether the Greeks had a life beyond the texts. Solon surely did not invent the concept; rather, the Hippocratic authors developed hygieia from an ancient tradition previously expressed in poetry that linked health with wealth and other good things vital to well-being. This tradition is echoed in the last section of Regimen in Health and the first of Affections (B. p. 46): the Hippocratic authors were deeply aware of the cultural place of hygieia. Similarly, B. tells us (p. 18) that Hesiod has all diseases coming from gods; but the author of On the Sacred Disease in his turn says in his final chapter that all diseases are theia.
In discussion of previous scholarship, including the CMG editors R. Joly and S. Byl, B. is broadly convincing: Regimen was written for ‘laymen’ – in response to other views, B. declares (p. 47), ‘as a matter of fact the author never addresses physicians’. B. adopts a broad approach, against those who would see Regimen as limited to a particular topic (pp. 68–9). He frequently pursues close reading of the text, and combines this with strong argumentation, for example on the tension between fire and water (pp. 72–7). The four books of the treatise are not necessarily all identical in thought (p. 88), but they are compatible with each other, from 1 to 4. Thus mental health in 4 depends on physiological functions as do diet, exercise and bathing in 2 and 3. Personal constitution is key, and (pp. 82ff.) not every constitution is in proportion or in a good mixture: 1.32 gives the principles for constitutions. (Sex is slightly different: the embryology in Book 1 is not carried through into the main regimen discussions in 2 and 3: men and women, it seems [surprisingly] are the same in dietary needs. Regimen in Health has a different view.) On lifestyle, B. reviews (pp. 85ff.) excesses of foods or exercises well at 3.70 and 3.73: regimen can cure more gently than drugs. B. is judicious in related discussion of dietary humours in On Ancient Medicine and on the other regimen books, Nature of Man and Regimen in Health. B. concludes (p. 100) that dietetics (and the theory thereof) developed dramatically in the late fifth century.
Chapter 2 addresses the philosophical contribution of Regimen: deep physical principles lie behind daily activity and technical processes (p. 124), these latter are used to provide analogies for the physiology of health. The unity of opposites is particularly important, with fire and water maintaining a dynamic tension between each other. B. reviews the Presocratic background on which the author draws eclectically, declaring (p. 163) that this Hippocratic author is the essential link between Heraclitus and company and Plato. B. is particularly strong on the author's use of analogies between technai and physis – often better than previous analyses. On music and cooking compared with physis in 1.18 B. is convincing on both text and concepts of harmony. On the analogy of the body with iron at 1.13, B. is uncertain (pp. 157–8 and n. 237): bathing after exercise is surely meant, like tempering iron in water – Galen, De sanitate tuenda 3.4 explains how such bathing works.
Chapter 3, on pre-Platonic discussions of soma/psyche (p. 169), offers (p. 178) interesting contrasts with Democritus (who divides body and soul) and is strong on the coherence of the body–soul connection through the four books, linking, for example, 1.35 on the constitution with 3.71 on exercise and 4.89 on the soul and dreams. Discussion of Book 4 is well done (pp. 204–7), as is embryology (pp. 207ff.).
The last chapter deals with the transmigration of souls (anticipating Plato) and innate heat and the enkindled soul (anticipating Aristotle). Following J. Jouanna, B. argues (pp. 240–1) for Plato's Timaeus drawing on Regimen for the idea of soul and body interacting, though Plato modifies the non-moralised Regimen into a ‘moralized dietetics’. On Aristotle, B. argues that an ambivalent approach to medicine did not prevent him from drawing on the innate heat of Regimen as a concept to be developed in his biology. B. succeeds in showing that far from being an outlier in medical or philosophical studies, the author of Regimen was at the heart of the debate about nature; about the relationship of body and soul; and about the biological function of heat – before the hugely influential works of Plato and Aristotle.
Underpinning such claims, B.’s argument is careful, persuasive and generous. Only occasionally, for example in an appendix on the ‘unfortunate story’ of a much-repeated confusion of one Hippocratic treatise for another in W.D. Ross’ Parva Naturalia (1955), does a note of severity creep in. The expression is generally clear, but there are occasional small lapses such as the use of ‘undermine’ where ‘underline’ is surely expected (p. 219 etc.). A final edit was also needed to iron out typos and the unidiomatic use of the troublesome article in English.
The bibliography is extensive, but I could not find S. Laser 1983 (p. 17), J. Ducatillon 1969 (p. 52) or G. Sörbom 2002 (p. 129).There is a tiny general index and a good index locorum and nominum.
