Obbedienza e persuasione. Due modelli della relazione medico-paziente nella Grecia antica

Abstract

Through the analysis of texts written between the 4th century BC and the 2nd century AD, the article reconstructs the emergence in ancient Greece of two opposing paradigms of the doctor-patient relationship, one based on dialogue and persuasion (peithó), and the other on the imposition of authority. In particular, the latter model proves to be amply suited to illustrating, in various Greek literature texts – and first of all the political dialogues of Plato –, the relationship between those who hold political power and those subjected to it. Taking into account a famous passage in the Laws, which in a very effective diptych contrasts the doctor of the free and the doctor of slaves (IV 720a- e), there is also an investigation of the subsequent fortune of some motifs present in that text, with particular attention to the reinterpretation to be made of it several centuries later by Galen.