Page:Greek Biology and Medicine.djvu/121

 THE FINAL SYSTEM: GALEN he was a logician and a rhetorician, a master of speech and composition. He was instructed in all branches of natural philosophy or science. A physicist in his ultimate considerations of the constituents of the human organism as a part of Nature, he was far more actively a biologist in his investigation of the same. His writings show medicine as part of biology. And indeed his treatment of medicine as the centre of a larger whole indicates the Greek unity of science, a unity afterwards to be lost, but today gradually reviving in the thought of those who see that the formal barriers between the sciences are vicious obstructions. Hippocrates regarded medicine as the heal- ing art. Although in fact he proceeded scien- tifically, following the method of observation and induction, and necessarily making use of working hypotheses, nevertheless as far as possible he set himself against theory. He refused to base medical practice upon theories as to the constitution of the world and man, and protested against permitting such to divert the practitioner from the teaching of his ex- perience. The rival school of Cnidus may have tried to be more scientific, in the sense of seeking to conform their practice to basic [99]