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Theophrastus, a student of Aristotle and his successor, created the science of botany and made possible the pharmacologists of a few centuries later. In the Hippocratic writings, there are mentioned 236 plants; in the botany of Theophrastus, 455. To one trait of master and pupil I must refer the human feeling, not alone of man for man, but a sympathy that even claims kinship with the animal world.
Water, barley water, and lime water were recommended as drinks. The dietetic principles of the Hippocratics, especially in connexion with fevers, are substantially those of the present day, and it may be said that the general medical tendency of the last generation in these matters has been an even closer approximation to the Hippocratic.
When we examine the Hippocratic corpus more closely, we discern that not only are the treatises by many hands, but there is not even a uniform opinion and doctrine running through them. This is well brought out by some of the more famous of the phrases of this remarkable collection.
Their task of observation of symptoms, of the separation of the essentials from the accidents of disease, and of generalization from experience could go on unaffected by any view of the nature of man and of the world. Diseases are to be cured, in the Hippocratic view, by restoring the disturbed harmony in the relation of the elements and humours.
The chief glory of the Hippocratic collection regarded from the clinical point of view is perhaps the actual description of cases. A number of these forty-two in all have survived.
The work of Celsus of the end of the first century B. C. is a Latin treatise, probably translated from Greek, and is the surviving medical volume of a complete cyclopaedia of knowledge. In spite of its unpromising origin it is an excellent compendium of its subject and shows a good deal of advance in many respects beyond the Hippocratic position.
XV, p. 800: "But this artistic completeness was closely connected with 'the third cardinal virtue' of Hippocratic medicine the clear recognition of disease as being equally with life a process governed by what we should now call natural laws, which could be known by observation and which indicated the spontaneous and normal direction of recovery, by following which alone could the physician succeed.
The Hippocratic school of Cos found a rival in the school of Cnidos, which offered not only a different view of the nature of disease, but also taught a different principle for its cure.
The first work to be so rendered was a version of Aphorisms of Hippocrates which, however, as we have seen, were already available in Latin dress, together with the Hippocratic Regimen in acute diseases, and certain works of Galen as corruptly interpreted by Isaac Judaeus.
I find it highly ironic that for at least the past twenty five hundred years the basic principle of good medicine has been that the treatment must first do no harm. This is such an obvious truism that even the AMA doctors pledge to do the same thing when they take the Hippocratic Oath.
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