Pythagoras – the healer
Regimen rather than the knife, music as medicine, Alcmaeon's teaching of the balance of forces and the daily training of memory.
The natural scientist Pythagoras includes the healer. Science and research, philosophy and art could not be separated for him. All knowledge had to have consequences and be applied, like a divine mission. Between science and mystery knowledge, between practical work and esotericism, he sought the connecting bond, as consistently as perhaps only Rudolf Steiner did later with anthroposophy.
Way of life before medicine
According to Iamblichus the Pythagoreans held the art of healing in high honour. In medicine they valued above all dietetics, the teaching of the right way of life, and were very exact in it:
- They watched for signs in order to find the right balance between work, food and rest.
- They were the first to discuss and regulate the preparation of food in detail.
- They used oils and ointments more often than earlier physicians and drugs less often, mostly remedies for ulcers.
- Cutting and burning, that is surgery, they allowed least of all.
- Against some illnesses they used incantations.
- They were convinced that music contributes greatly to health if used rightly. Melodies are handed down for the evening, to bring calm, and for the morning, to wake one up.
- They also used selected verses of Homer and Hesiod to set the soul right again.
Alcmaeon: health as balance
From Alcmaeon of Croton, physician, philosopher and younger contemporary of Pythagoras, comes the teaching of the balance of forces in the great and the small, in macrocosm and microcosm. It had a long influence and surely has Pythagorean roots.
According to Alcmaeon a person stays healthy as long as the forces are in balance: wet and dry, cold and warm, bitter and sweet and so on. If one of them rules alone, illness arises.
| Question | Alcmaeon’s answer |
|---|---|
| origin of illness | excess of heat or cold |
| occasion | too much or too little food |
| seat | in the blood, the marrow or the brain |
| external causes | the quality of water or land, overexertion, violence |
| health | an even mixture of the qualities |
Training the memory
This holistic art of healing even included the power of memory. A Pythagorean did not get up in the morning before he had recalled the previous day. He went through it in order: what he had said, heard or ordered first after rising, what second and third, whom he had met first on going out, which conversations he had held in which order, to the end of the day. He considered what was to come in the same way. If he had more time, he also repeated the day before in the same manner.