Page:Greek Biology and Medicine.djvu/153

Rh tion. This ordered store of clinical experience will tell the practitioner when no application of the "hot or cold" theory, but a regulated diet, will benefit the patient.

Yet the Hippocratics used working hypotheses of general application. They conceived them as the fruits of medical experience. The two most famous were the hypothesis of the four humors and that of the vis medicatrix naturae, the healing energy of nature herself. The first has been discarded; but the second is in some form and manner still accepted universally in medicine and surgery.

Another fundamental Hippocratic conviction or hypothesis was that diseases came from natural, not demonic, causes, and should be treated by natural remedies rather than by magic. It was this conviction that enabled Greek medicine to become a rational art and possible science. One sees at once its broad affiliation. The assumption of the constant action of natural causes underlies every mechanical art and all physical science. In medicine, the hypothesis that disease is due to natural causes, and should be treated by corresponding remedies, has had a chequered career! Yet one will scarcely beg the question