Abstract

Analogy in ancient Greek medical texts may be either explicit or implicit. Greek physicians of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. often used explicit analogy, e.g. when trying to explain unobservable processes within the body by comparing them to observable processes in common objects. Such explicit analogies served several purposes: illustration, exemplification, confirmation, or a combination thereof. ‐ Other analogies are implicit, particularly those originating in metaphors, i. e. in language. While explicit analogies were intended to support only marginal details of medical doctrines, analogies implicit in metaphors occasionally became the nuclei of comprehensive and therapeutically important doctrines, particularly with reference to the crisis of a disease. ‐ Explicit and implicit analogies occur already very early (Homer, eighth century B. C.) and with characteristics which make it possible to assess the specific function of analogy in Greek medical texts of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.