Page:Greek Biology and Medicine.djvu/50

 GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE disease/* Viewed in this way they were more knowable, their significance better understood, than the finer distinctions between one disease and another which admittedly outran the knowledge of these practitioners. In practice this generic knowledge was carefully adapted to the particular case. The patient himself was studied, his peculiar constitution taken account of, and his symptoms were treated with refer- ence to his condition. These physicians were not tabulating diseases, they were set upon meeting the exigencies of each case — trying harm him." Accordingly, instead of finely distinguishing diagnoses of the different diseases, Hippocrates and his school worked out a general prognosis, a detailed and comprehensive exposition of the i symptoms and course of acute disease, as ex- i emplified in pleurisy or pneumonia, and in those various fevers so common in Greece. This is the theme of the TrpoyvwaTiKov or Prognosis, one of the most authentic of the Hippocratic writings: "He seems to me the best physician who is able to know in advance " the entire group of phenomena constituting the disease, to wit, to divine its previous conduct, [28] w
 * ' to do good to the patient, or at least not