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τούτοις μέν κτλ. The words τοὺς μὲν ὑγιεινῶς ἔχοντας led us to expect ἰᾶσθαι, but the construction changes in order to introduce the invention of medicine, and the ‘healing’ reappears in a different form in φαρμάκοις τε—δίαιταν. The sentence is bad grammar, but good conversational style of the looser kind. It is not easy to say whether τε after φαρμάκοις connects the clauses, or only φαρμάκοις with τομαῖς. The former use is comparatively rare in Plato (Hoefer, de part. Plat. p. 7). Partly on this ground, and partly because the union of the aorist καταδεῖξαι with προστάττειν is a little awkward, I prefer the second alternative. The asyndeton, which is of the usual explanatory or ampliative kind, is in keeping with the loose structure of the whole sentence, and seems to me to add a certain didactic impressiveness here: cf. 409 B. τὰ δ᾽ εἴσω—σώματα depends not so much on ἀπαντλοῦντα directly as on the composite notion ἀπαντλοῦντα καὶ ἐπιχέοντα, which expresses a certain mode of treatment, and is as it were a species of the general idiom ποιεῖν τινά τι. φυτεύειν must depend on ποιεῖν. Plato's sentences are seldom so disjointed as this: cf. however VI 488 B ff., VIII 558 A.
The Republic of Plato. James Adam. 1902. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.
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