ギリシアの医学思想における発生の問題 : 『生殖について』第6章〜第8章の議論の分析を中心に
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The aim of my discussion is to explore key features of the medical theory of generation in the Hippocratic treatise entitled On Generation[Genit.], and to make clear its relationship with biological arguments among some of the pre-Socratic philosophers in the fifth century BC. The main focus is on the systematic explications given by the author in chapters 6-8 of the treatise as to the most fundamental issues on the generation of living things and of human beings in particular, i. e. sex determination and inheritance of characteristics from parents to their children. The theory of generation in Genit. presupposes three hypotheses as its theoretical principles, (a) Both parents, male and female, contribute semen, (b) Semen comes from all parts of the body (the theory of Pangenesis). (c) Each parent may provide both male and female sperm. One may well suppose that the author took over (a) and (b) as the already established hypotheses available to him from his contemporary embryology, while he proposed (c) as his original view. He obviously thought (c) to be the most important for establishing a comprehensive theory of generation. In chapters 7-8, the author mentions three observed facts, which he must have obtained from his own medical experience, and regards them as evidence for his original view. These facts are 1) many couples, who have got only girl children, by changing their partnership, have boy children, and vice versa, 2) the same couples have both boy children and girl children, and 3) some girls resemble their father, and some boys resemble their mother. Why did the author think that (c) could be well justified by these facts ? It has been claimed by some scholars [Lesky(1950), Lonie(1981)] that the author attributed "sexual bi-potency" to the seed which comes from each part of the body. The author may have held, according to their interpretation, that the seed, which comes from each part of the bodies of both parents, not only transmits to their children the characteristics of the parts belonging to the parent, who has offered more seed from there than the other, but it also determines the sex of the children as male or female sperm, since it is sexually bi-potential. Such an explanation, interesting as it may be, should be rejected, because in the case of daughters who resemble their father, and vice versa, the different kind of sperm from the one determining the sex of the parents could be more prevalent in them. This problem will be solved, provided that, apart from the seed coming from each part of the body, there are two kinds of sperm, male and female, existing inherently in the bodies of both parents. The parents need to have the one kind of these two sperms in more quantity than the other, according to their own sex. In reproduction, the one or the other kind of sperm will be offered to determine the sex of their children, in the same ratio or proportion to the total amount of all the seeds which come from each part of the body. In chapter 3 of the treatise, the author says that sperm is secreted from the whole body, both from hard parts and from soft parts, and from the total fluid. It is probable that the author held that the total fluid, which pervades the whole body, is the source of the two kinds of sperm. If so, it is good evidence that he was opposed to the embryology of Democritus, who limited the origin of sex determining sperms to the genital parts.
- 日本西洋古典学会の論文
- 2009-03-26
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関連論文
- LONGRIGG, James, Greek Rational Medicine : Philosophy and Medicine from, Alcmaeon to the Alexandrians., Pp. ix+296, Routledge, London/New York, 1993.
- Elizabeth M. Craik, Hippocrates : Places in Man, Greek Text and Translation with Introduction and Commentary., Pp.xxiii+259, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1998.
- ギリシアの医学思想における発生の問題 : 『生殖について』第6章〜第8章の議論の分析を中心に