Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/64

 S8 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

the ethics of their calling. I need hardly say that the *' AphorigmB of Hippocrates^' have long ago taken their place immovably amongst the world's classics.

Many more doctrines in medicine are due to Hippocrates than most people, even most physicians, believe. The doctrine of humors, of the healing power of nature, of critical days (this latter the result of Pythag- orean influence), are all Hippocratic; while "Hippocratic succession" and the ^^facies Hippocratica'' have been an integral part of medical terminology for 2,300 years. Hippocrates recognized four humors, blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile, a proper or due mixing of which constituted good health, an undue predominance of any one, dis- ease, notions which gave rise to the "humoral pathology'' which domi- nated medicine for ages, and which in another sense dominates it still. Hippocrates, as one might suppose, had a much better knowledge of the bodily organs than of their functions. He certainly confused nerves, tendons and ligaments, a mistake quite excusable, seeing that they are all very similar in the dead body of a lower animal; for there is no evidence that Hippocrates examined the body of any animal during its life. In all probability he did not even dissect the human body. The bare idea of doing so would have been repugnant to the beauty-loving Oreek. Some of the Hippocratic physiology is not far from the truth, some of it far indeed. He knew that food was "cooked" in the stomach, that a lesion on one side of the brain produces paralysis on the opposite side of the body, that the heart contains blood, that the liver prepares blood and bile, and that the lens of the eye has to do with vision. He knew that local fatigue could, if sufficiently developed, pro- duce general fatigue. Hippocrates divided diseases into chronic and acute, endemic and epidemic, distinctions we recognize yet.

Again the terms angina, catharsis, catarrh, enema, paracentesis, glaucoma, gangrene, syncope, hemorrhage, " healing by the first inten- tion," are all terms of Hippocratic medicine in use to-day. The Father of Medicine wrote on the principles of surgery, obstetrics, dietetics and treatment. As regards treatment he was thoroughly eclectic, using every means in his power to restore the sick man to health. The modern treat- ment of fevers is essentially Hippocratic; febrile patients were allowed to drink water or barley water; later medicine, arriving at the doctrine that water was injurious to the fevered organism, practised much un- conscious cruelty and undoubtedly sacrificed many lives.

Hippocrates is the all-round physician ; he knows all that has gone before in his science. " The physician," he says, " must know what his predecessors have known if he does not wish to deceive both himself and others." He studies everything concerning his patient, his heredity, the objective signs, and the subjective when he can elicit them. His profession is to him as art to the artist: "Where is love for art, there

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