Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/180

 f {,8 HISTORY OF GREECE. It is hardly within the province of an historian of Greece to repeat after Thucydides the painful enumeration of symptoms, violent in the extreme, and pervading every portion of the bodily system, which marked this fearful disorder. Beginning in Peiraeus, it quickly passed into the city, and both the one and the other was speedily filled with sickness and suffering, the like of which had never before been known. The seizures were per- fectly sudden, and a large proportion of the sufferers perished, after deplorable agonies, on the seventh or on the ninth day : others, whose strength of constitution carried them over this period, found themselves the victims of exhausting and incurable diar- rhoea afterwards : with others again, after traversing both these stages, the distemper fixed itself in some particular member, the eyes, the genitals, the hands, or the feet, which were rendered permanently useless, or in some cases amputated, even where the patient himself recovered. There were also some whose recov- ery was attended with a total loss of memory, so that they no more knew themselves or recognized their friends. No treat- ment or remedy appearing, except in accidental cases, to produce any beneficial effect, the physicians or surgeons whose aid was invoked became completely at fault; while trying their accus- tomed means without avail, they soon ended by catching the malady themselves and perishing: nor were the charms and aurions des materiaux & 1'aide desquels nous prcndrions une idee bien plus precise de la pathologic de ces siecles recules Mais tout en exprimant ce regret et en reconnaissant cette utilite relative a nous autres modernes et ve'ritablement conside'rable, il faut ajouter que 1'antiquite avoit dans les faits et la doctrine Hippocratiques un aliment qui lui a suffi et qu'une collec- tion, meme etcndue, d'histoires particulieres n'auroit pas alors modifie la me'decine, du moins la medecine scientifique, cssenticllcment et au deli de la limite que comportoit la physiologic. Je pourrai montrer ailleurs quo la doctrine d'Hippocrate et de 1'ecole de Cos a etc la seule solide, la seule fondee sur un aperfu vrai de la nature organisee ; et que les sectes posteri- cures, me'thodisme et pneumatisme. n'ont bati leurs theories que sur del hypotheses sans consistance. Mais ici je me contente de remarquer, que la pathologic, en tant que science, ne peut marcher qu'a la suite de la physiologic, dont clle n'est qu'une des faces : et d'Hippocrate a Galien in- clusivement. la physiologic ne fit pas assez de progres pour rcndre insuffi- sante la conception Hippocratique. II en resulte. necessairemcnt, que la pathologic, toujours considered comme science, n'auroit pu, par quelque procede quo ce fat, gagner que des corrections ct des augmentations dj ile'tail."