Page:Greek Biology and Medicine.djvu/157

 LINKAGE WITH THE MODERN TIME acceptance of the principles of Hippocratic practice. Not improperly was Sydenham called " the English Hippocrates." Although conversant with the natural sciences of his time, he refused to base the practice of medi- cine upon any theory drawn from them, even as Hippocrates and his school had refused to base their medicine upon the theories of the Greek physical philosophers. Like Hippocrates, Sydenham set himself in every case to study the whole course of the patient's disease, observing the succession of symptoms, and the response of the patient to the treatment employed. Like Hippocrates, he conceived a disease as the struggle of the body's healing energy — the vis medicatrix naturae — with the noxious agent. He divided the symptoms into: (i) those essentially per- taining to the action of the noxious cause; (2) those arising from the reaction of the patient's system; and (3) those induced by the treat- ment. He developed the conception of succes- sive phases of disease, and of the pernicious or benignant symptoms pertaining to them. Sydenham, again like Hippocrates, con- cerned himself chiefly with acute disease. A malady became chronic through the slowness [135]