Methodic School - Doctrines

Doctrines

The Methodic school emphasized the treatment of diseases rather than the history of the individual patient. According to the Methodists, medicine is no more than a “knowledge of manifest generalities” (gnōsis phainomenōn koinotēnōn). In other words, medicine was no more than the awareness of general, recurring features that manifest in a tangible way . While Methodist views on medicine are slightly more complex than this, the above generalization was meant to apply to not only medicine, but to any art. Methodists conceive of medicine as a true art, in contrast to Empiricists or Dogmatists.

They asserted that the knowledge of the cause of the disease bears no relation to the method of cure, and that it is sufficient to observe some general symptoms of illnesses. All a doctor really needs to know is the disease itself, and from that knowledge alone will he know the treatment. To claim that knowledge of the disease alone will provide knowledge of the treatment, the Methodists first claim that diseases are indicative of their own treatments. Just as how hunger leads a person naturally to food and how thirst leads a person naturally to water, so too does the disease naturally indicate the cure. As Sextus Empiricus points out, when a dog is pricked by a thorn, it naturally removes the foreign object ailing its body.

The core theory was disruption of the normal circulation of 'atoms' through the body's 'pores' caused disease. To cure a disease it is sufficient to observe some general symptoms of illnesses; and that there are three kinds of diseases, one bound, another loose (fluens, a disorder attended with some discharge), and the third a mixture of these. Sometimes the excretions of sick people are too small or too large, or a particular excretion might be deficient or excessive. These kinds of illnesses are sometimes severe, sometimes chronic, sometimes increasing, sometimes stable, and sometimes abating. As soon as it is known to which of these diseases an illness belongs, if the body is bound, then it must be opened; if it is loose, then it must be restrained; if it is complicated, then the most urgent malady must be fought first. One type of treatment is required in acute, another in inveterate illnesses; another when diseases are increasing, another when stable, and another when decreasing. The observation of these things constitute the art of medicine, called method (Greek: Μέθοδος).

As the seeking after the causes of diseases seemed to Themison to rest on too uncertain a foundation, he thus wished to establish his system upon the analogies and indications common to many diseases (Greek: κοινότες), no matter that these analogies were as obscure as the causes of the Dogmatic school. Themison wrote several works which are now lost.