Healing and the word: Hippocratic medicine and Sophistical rhetoric in classical antiquity

This dissertation is concerned with the relationship between Hippocratic medicine and Sophistical rhetoric in fifth-century BCE Greek culture. This connection is investigated in relation to the writings in the Hippocratic corpus and the fragments of Sophists such as Gorgias, Antiphon, and Democritus. While there are a myriad of short references to the close relationship had by the Sophists and the Hippocratics, this dissertation seeks to make the connection more than only suggestive by arguing that both rhetoric and medicine were cultural practices practiced by both intellectual traditions. In so showing, the dissertation attempts to argue for an historicized interpretation of rhetoric and a rhetorical interpretation of medicine. In addition, an alternative history of medicine told in a rhetorical perspective is offered along with a more expansive view of the history of rhetoric. Finally, these points are made in a methodological frame offered by recent insights from the Rhetoric of Science. Included is a review of critical works in the Rhetoric of Science. Also included is a discussion of theoretical traditions in the history of medicine, an elaborated consideration of the cultural history of rhetoric, and an investigation into the ideologies which have historically separated rhetoric from medicine both in histories and in anthologies and collections of the work of the Sophists and the Hippocratics. Finally, the dissertation asserts that as the rhetorical heritage of medicine has been lost, the medical profession has become the 'silent art' much to the detriment of the success of its practices.