Page:Greek Biology and Medicine.djvu/48

 GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE Places, which also illustrates the broad Hip- pocratic view of the province of medicine. It is the earliest essay known on the influence of physical environment upon health, disease and temperament. It holds that the intelligent physician must understand the effects of the situation or exposure of a city, of the varying seasons and the different winds, the quality of the water, the nature of the soil, and the inhabitants. It treats of climate and the dis- eases which prevail in certain localities from their exposure to certain v»^inds; of the kinds of water and their effect upon the human body, for example in the formation of urinary calculi. The influence of the season is then set forth; and finally the effect of climate and despotic institutions in inducing the mild and unwarlike dispositions of the peoples of Asia, whose spirit is enslaved; while the mountainous and well-watered lands of Europe, with their sharp changes of season, have produced enterprising and warlike, or even ferocious inhabitants. Such is a scanty outline of this penetrating presentation of matters which have been under the sharpest discussion, and from so many points of view, in the last hundred years. Without agreeing with all the statements of [26]