mental powers, acquire experience faster than some others possessed of less mental calibre. One person may thus experience more in five minutes than another in five hours or in five days, or never at all. And if one admit that experience may be inherited, which is generally conceded to-day, the mystery surrounding Hippocrates' acquirements is far from being a mystery. It becomes easy of solution. He did not need the genius of any contemporary to light his. Many animals get upon their legs and walk as soon as they are born or hatched, and exhibit instinctive intelligence without training, and recognize their mother's call, and their enemies at first sight or sound, as if they were old-time acquaintances. This is a heritage of experience. If this is nothing to marvel at, surely there can be no cause of marvel when a genius springs forth into full brilliancy unheralded and without a university education, as did the "Father of Medicine," and a host of others in the world's history that have been invested by the multitude with divine attributes. Surely if experience were needed as the source of Hippocrates' excellence of attainments, he did not want for that. Was he not the eighteenth remove from Esculapius, the son of Apollo, himself a god, according to the Greek figment?

Hippocrates brought to the practice of his profession the sternest habits of rectitude. It does not appear in his prescriptions that he appealed to the element of faith, or that he practised

the principle of Suggestion, or Expectation, or Mystery, as aids to convalescence, which the moderns find so effective in certain temperaments, and the use of which is manifestly justifiable in such cases. He looked upon such acts and devices as the agencies of the quack, charlatan, and mountebank, totally unworthy and unbecoming the dignity of a devotée of a learned profession. To use any of these agencies or measures on the sick with any result, one must needs do so under cover; that is, one must practise deceit and deceive the patient as to his method in order to effect any beneficial results. Such a procedure is repugnant, it must be confessed, to an honest man, especially when it is practised for gain. Nor would he countenance the practice of artifices to attract the attention of patients to him; nor indulge in other specious ways of advertising for cases, or for business ends, the tricks of the tradesman, as unworthy the physician. This class of practitioners was prevalent in his day, but it was mostly confined to the priesthood and professional magicians and sorcerers. All readers of his works know the terms of reproach and contumely with which he referred to them. Medicine was a gift from God, he declared.

In the oath, called the "Hippocratian Oath," which he administered to his medical pupils about to enter upon the practice of medicine, may be observed the lofty sentiments of piety and consecration which animated the kindly spirit

of this pagan physician. It reads, with slight omissions, as follows:

I swear by the physician Apollo, and Esculapius and Hygeia and All-Heal, and the gods and goddesses, that according to my ability I will keep this oath and this stipulation, to reckon him who taught me this Art as equally dear to me as my parents, to share my substance with him, and relieve his necessities if required; to look upon his offspring in the same footing as my brothers, and to teach them this Art, if they shall wish to learn it, without fee or stipulation; and that by precept, lecture, and every other mode of instruction, I will impart a knowledge of the Art to my own sons and those of my teachers, and to disciples bound by stipulation and oath according to the law of medicine, but to no others. I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous. I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, or suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion. With purity and holiness I will pass my life and practise my Art. Into whatever houses I enter I will go into them for the benefit of the sick, and will abstain from every voluntary act of mischief and corruption; and further, from the seduction of females or males, of freemen or slaves. Whatever in connection with my professional practice, or not in connection with it, I see or hear in the life of men which ought not to be spoken of abroad, I will not divulge, as reckoning that all such should be kept secret. While I continue to keep this oath inviolate, may it

be granted to me to enjoy life and the practice of the Art, respected by all men in all times; and should I trespass or violate this oath, may the reverse be my lot.1

Such was in brief the character of the man Hippocrates. It remains to give some account of the physician Hippocrates, his method of practice, and the system of practice which he bequeathed to posterity, and which is known to-day as "Orthodox Medicine."

To Aristotle, the Stagirite, is usually accorded the honor of first introducing the inductive method in the search for truth. But it was the method of interrogating nature pursued by Pythagoras more than two hundred years before the advent of Aristotle, and by Hippocrates more than one hundred years prior to that sage's birth. It is probable that Esculapius pursued that method at Epidaurus, for in the state of the medical art at that time no other method was expedient or possible; nor was any other method wholly so in the days of the "Father of Medicine."

To the inductive method of arriving at truth of interrogating nature as Bacon called it,Hippocrates rigidly adhered that is, he adhered to it as rigidly as possible in the crude state of the materia medica to which he had recourse, and the limitations of his knowledge of the medicinal virtues. That he often became amenable to the charge of empiricism, which at a later day was I Works of Hippocrates, p. 779.

a term of reproach, may be frankly admitted. Often must he have guessed at the truth, so far as the medicinal virtues of drugs were concerned, which was, of course, an act of empiricism.

However that may be, his method of procedure was essentially inductive, not only in the examination of the sick, but also in ascertaining the specific virtues of medicine. In the phenomena of diseases, it was his habit to observe with great particularity, both objectively and subjectively. He grouped such abnormal phenomena into signs and symptoms, and taken together he made up the diagnosis, prognosis, and indications of treatment-by a purely inductive process. In these clinical details he was helped to conclusions by certain hypotheses as to the exciting and proximate causes of the malady,-working hypotheses, such as the four elements, heat, cold, dry and moist, in the constitution of nature, and the four humors of the body, in one or more of which was the seat of the disease, the abnormal disturbance of which determined the nature of the disease itself. These humors he designated black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm. This hypothesis was the foundation of humoral pathology, which dominated medical opinion down to within living memory. These humors must be purged in disease, if elimination was the indication presented. The means to this end were determined by experience alone. These examinations of the patient's condition, and inquiry as to the cause