ABSTRACT
The origin of semiotics may be identified in symptomatology, following Sebeok (who contextualizes the general science of signs in a tradition of thought that originated with Hippocrates (c. 460-377 BCE) and was developed by Galen (c. 129-200)). The connection between semiotics and medical semiotics is also examined by Eugen Baer (1988: 37-99). But Rudolph Kleinpaul in Sprache ohne Worte (1972 [1888]: 103) had already indicated Hippocrates as ‘der Vater und Meister aller Semiotik’, the father and master of all semiotics. Symptomatology became a branch of medicine characterized by a threefold temporal orientation according to Galen who recovered the teachings of Hippocrates (praeteritorum cognitio, praesentium inspectio, futurorum providentia): towards the past (anamnesis), the present (diagnostics), the future (prognosis). Apart from acquiring knowledge about its origins, to relate semiotics to the branch of medicine that studies symptoms implies recovery of the ethical instance of semiotic studies. The ethical instance is explicit in the Hippocratic oath. This is not just a question of professional ethics, it does not concern the physician solely in the role of physician. Instead, the whole person in one’s daily activity is involved (see Hippocrates, Decorum, VII, and Precepta, VI). Hippocrates prescribed that the physician should help citizens and foreigners alike and, if necessary, without payment. For wherever there is love for a human
being, he said, there is also love for art. Galen too observed the inseparability of science and ethics.
