Style and Reasoning in the Hippocratic Corpus

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This book offers a fresh examination of the experimental nature of persuasion in the ancient Greek Hippocratic medical treatises, which are among the first examples of 'scientific' explanatory writing composed for oral dissemination in an age in which there are few precedents for prose treatises. Analysis of the persuasive features of Hippocratic prose treatises reveals recognisable signs of 'scientific' reasoning - such as reference to evidence, proof and logical validity. Often obscured, however, in current discussions of proto-scientific prose are the presence and significance of stylistic features such as formulae in wording and phrasing and the use of rhyme and word play which both contribute to the persuasive effectiveness of such writing and suggest new insights into the nature of early Greek prose authors' understanding of notions of 'scientific' reasoning. This study considers the impact of the stylistic features of early Greek prose writing associated with a culture of oral knowledge dissemination on notions of reasoning, and also offers an analysis of poetics to contribute to our understanding of the relationship between Hippocratic and contemporary Greek prose authors.