Chapter 5 Holism and the Methodists
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Abstract
As far as the Methodist medical sect is concerned, the question of holism most conspicuously arises in connection with the topic of the affected part (ὁ πεπονθὼς τόπος, locus affectus) in disease, which was a variable that the Methodists ignored, or at least downplayed, in contrast to their rivals. Extant Methodist treatises are often found insisting that the whole body suffers in disease, and that it should accordingly be treated as a whole. In this sense, the Methodists can be said to have taken a kind of holistic approach to therapeutics. But their reasoning on the question of the affected part turns out to be nuanced, and their rivals’ claims that they ignored the affected part altogether is something of a distortion. In this paper, I attempt to specify exactly what the Methodist position was on the question of the affected part in disease, what sort of holism this represented and how their approach may have developed out of more fundamental commitments. I argue that the application of their ‘Method’ led to a distinctive and noteworthy position on the issue of holism, one which deliberately encouraged the physician to minimise the significance of differences between diseases, including differences in the location of symptoms, and to focus rather on certain features which they share. Analysis of this position reveals some interesting characteristics of their approach to therapy in general, in particular their exploitation of the huge body of earlier therapeutic literature of the Classical and Hellenistic periods which they had inherited.