Page:Greek Biology and Medicine.djvu/13

 EDITORS' PREFACE

MANY READERS will find in the pages of Doctor Taylor a revelation in the amazing advance made by Greek Biology and Medicine and in the extent of our indebtedness to Hippocrates, Aristotle and Galen. The subject is one not so well known as some other aspects of the Greek and Roman civilizations. We are apt to think of magic and superstition in the medical practice of the ancients, in spite of our Celsus and the oracular Pliny. The specialist may have followed the expositions of Sir William Osier, Dr. Charles Singer, Sir Clifford Allbutt and Dr. Arthur J. Brock, but this book is addressed to the layman. It is our hope that a wider and deeper interest will result in the achievements of those Greeks who laid the foundations, permanent and secure, for the sciences of Biology and Medicine.

The history of the influence of the Greek biologists and medical men still remains to be written, but it will be a fascinating chapter in