Page:Greek Biology and Medicine.djvu/60

 GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE correlation among the human organs with the consequent recognition of the general disorder " resulting from the sickness of any one of them, is with us still. Likewise the fundamental Hippocratic tenet of assisting nature to work her own cure has remained valid and accepted, in some form at least of re-expression to suit the different and finally larger knowledge of later times. No one disputes it today; and it was doubly wise and sound for men whose knowledge was as pardonably rudimentary as that of Hippocrates. Charles Singer expresses his judgment of the Hippocratics thus: "The work of these men may be summed up by say- ing that without dissection, without any ex- perimental physiology or pathology, and with- out any instrumental aid, they pushed the knowledge of the course and origin of disease as far as it is conceivable that men in such circumstances could push it. This was done as a process of pure scientific induction. Their surgery, though hardly based on anatomy, was grounded on the most carefully recorded ex- perience. In therapeutics they allowed them- selves neither to be deceived by false hopes nor led aside by vain traditions. Yet in diag- nosis, prognosis, surgery and therapeutics [38]