Page:Greek Biology and Medicine.djvu/42

 J GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE stood by means of the four humors, which seemed to Hippocrates the nearest explanation of the observed phenomena. Thus a certain amount of hypothesis entered the Hippocratic healing art; — as it necessarily makes part of every art as well as every science. But Hippocrates at least economized in hy- pothesis as few men after him, and very con- sciously. For he was an acute Ionian Greek, and the need to seek and formulate explana- tions, that is, hypotheses, comes with great urgency to every intelligent and inquiring mind. Babylonians and Egyptians, who were prac- tical, but not intellectually curious, were not beset with any like cravings. And indeed the history of Greek, as well as modern, medicine will illustrate this competitive endeavor of the intellectual mind to keep its explanations abreast of observation; — indeed explanations, hypotheses, in the endeavor to keep abreast, to account for phenomena, save the appearances (croj^etv TO, (l>aLv6fxeva, a Platonic phrase), will constantly go beyond them, and so astray. All progressive physical science, and medicine striving ever to become a science, exhibit this struggle of hypothesis to account for observa- tion. And doubtless the more modest working [20]