Page:Greek Biology and Medicine.djvu/47

 THE HIPPOCRATICS religious, and as knowing more than other people. Such persons, then, using the divinity as a pretext and screen of their own inability to afford any assistance, have given out that the disease is sacred, adding suitable reasons for this opinion; they have instituted a mode of treatment which is safe for themselves, namely by applying purifications and incantations, and enforcing abstinence from baths and many articles of food which are unwholesome to sick men. . . ." ^" After a statement of the causes of the dis- ease within the human body or arising from outer influences, the conclusion follows, that " this disease called sacred comes from the same causes as the others, from cold, from the sun, or from changing winds. These are divine; but they do not make this disease more divine than others. All are human and divine and each has its own nature and power." So each disease has its own nature and can-% not arise without natural causes, — a beautiful and enlightened view for which we have so largely to thank Hippocrates. The principle that disease and health are due to natural causes is exemplified in the large by the Hippocratic tract On Airs, Waters and [25]