Author(s):
Nutton, Vivian (London)
[German version] (Ἀρεταῖος;
Aretaîos) of Cappadocia. Greek Hippocratic physician who was influenced by Pneumatic theory. [13] therefore assigned him to the middle of the 1st cent. AD. A.'s name was first mentioned in the late 2nd. cent as the author of a text about prophylactics in Ps.-Alex. Aphr. De febribus 1, 92, 97, 105. However, Galen repeats A.'s story of a leper that appeared in Morb. chron. 4,13,20 without any reference to the source in Subfig. emp. 10 = Deichgräber 75-9. Thirty years later, Galen claimed in Simp. med. fac. 11 p.r = Gal. 12,312 to have experienced this episode in his youth, that is, in the years around 140 in Asia Minor. The fact that Galen never mentions A. in his writings does not exclude the possibility that the two were contemporaries. A. wrote about fever and surgery, but only his four books ‘On the Causes and Symptoms of Acute and Chronic Diseases’ as well as four other books on the therapies thereof have survived. A. wrote a highly stylized, Hippocratic Greek with many allusions to the Corpus Hippocraticum. For each disease, he described precisely and systematically the location (including anatomical aspects), the significance of the name and the symptoms and causes, with special consideration given to the patient's age, gender and the season. Diseases such as syncope (Caus. 2,3), asthma (Chron. 1,11), and diabetes (Chron. 2,2) are accurately observed, correctly described and clearly prese…