Page:Greek Biology and Medicine.djvu/160

 GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE cratic precept; and well for him and all with whom he came in contact if he have drawn into his nature, and reflect in his professional conduct, the Hippocratic ethics of the heal- ing art. And if modern medicine and biology no longer draw directly from the old Greek store, we still may reflect upon the antecedent in- fluence by which we profit. The guiding knowl- edge, which we no longer need, did its work in our immediate or mediate predecessors, and thus led on to us. The shoulders that we stand on are the taller because the men before us, or the men before them, stood upon the shoulders of the Greeks. So the Greek founda- tion stones have their place in our edifice of knowledge. And still at the summit waves the flag of nature, — the old Hippocratic 4>vcns — as the healer of the body's ills: vovcrojv 0i;o-€is LTjTpol, vis medicatrix naturae. Today more universally than ever, if not more profoundly, we realize that the power of an organism to heal or restore itself is one of the universal marks dividing all living organisms — plants, and animals, and man — from the inorganic world. [138]