tongue, and the understanding; which are to be known by all the means we know other things." Sec. 2. "The things relating to surgery, are: the patient, the operator, the assistants, the instruments, the light, where and how, how many things and how, where the body and the instruments, the time, manner, the place." Sec. 78. "Articulations.-The prime object of the physician in the whole art of medicine should be to cure that which is diseased, and if this can be accomplished in various ways, the least troublesome should be selected; for this is more becoming a good man and one skilled in the art, who does not covet popular coin of base alloy." His method and time of applying bandages, splints and compresses finds favor with such men as Malgaigne. He minutely describes the four dislocations of the hip joint. The club foot for which he lays down a treatment, if better observed at the present day, would save the operation of tenotomy. He took the ground that in such cases there was not a dislocation of the joints. "In connection with his description of dislocations at the hip joint, in the fourth form of dislocations, (says his translator,) Sir Astley Cooper, Mr. Liston, Sir Charles Bell, Mr. Samuel Cooper, and in a word, all our best authorities of late years, maintained that the head of the bone in this form is lodged in the ischiatic notch; but Mr. Richard Quain has lately determined by actual dissection, that the bone is lodged where it is described to be by Hippocrates, namely behind the acetabulum in the nates." And still further: "The me thods of reduction, too, which our author describes, are all based on the most correct principles, and some of them might perhaps be held preferable to those now in use." Chemistry was then little understood, at least only a few principles were known that could be applied to medicine. The attention of the profession was directed in that way by Hippocrates when he tries to - account for lithic disease and others, in consequence of different kinds of water which were used as a beverage. We find a few hints in the writings of Hippocrates to show what his psychological opinions were. He opposes the opinion that the seat of the mind and passions were in the heart, and the opinion that the diaphragm has anything to do with feeling and sensibility, as its name imports; but he says: "Wherefore I say, that it is the brain which interprets the understanding." (The sacred disease.) However confused or wrong his notions were, still his approximation to the generally received opinions among the learned of the present day are such as to give him a place among the first of the order of philo. sophers who argued on this subject upon rational and inductive principles. We find Lord Bacon frequently quoting from Hippocrates as authority in medicine, and there can be no question that he was a faithful reader of his works. As we have before seen (Organon Sec. 73), he ridicules the philosophy of the Greeks, when he says (p. 8), "scarcely one single experiment have they left us, that has a tendency to elevate or assist mankind." He adds in his tract in praise of knowledge (Vol. 1, p. 79), that the philosophy of the "Grecians hath the foundations in words, in ostentation, in confutation, in sects, in schools, in disputations. The Grecians were, as one of themselves saith, "you Grecians ever are children." He does not except medicine here, but impliedly he does through all his works, as we may see in his Organon Sec. 79, 80 and 81, where he says that natural philosophy ought to have taken the lead in scientific investigation and importance. He says: "Thus has this great mother of the sciences been degraded most unworthily to the situation of an handmaid, and made to wait upon medicine or mathematical operations, and to wash the immature minds of youth and imbue them with a first dye, that they may afterwards be more ready to receive and retain another." We never find him referring to any other works on medicine than those of Hippocrates, except those of Celsus who was an admirer and follower of Hippocrates, except the alchymists, whose philosophy, he says, "hath the foundation in imposture, in auricular traditions and obscurity." In his work "Natural History," Vol. 2, p. 57, sec. 384, he says: "Many diseases, both epidemical and others, break forth at particular times, and the cause is falsely imputed to the constitution of the air at that time when they break forth or reign, whereas it proceedeth, indeed, from a precedent sequence and series of the year, and therefore Hippocrates in his prognostics doth make good observations of the diseases that ensue upon the nature of the precedent four seasons of the year." Then again in the same work Sec. 55, p. 16, he says in relation to dress: "But chiefly Hippocrates' rule is to be followed, who adviseth quite contrary to that which is in use, namely that the linen or garment in winter next the flesh be in winter dry and often changed," &c. In his preface to "The Maxims of Law," among many other reasons why he wrote in aphorisms, he says: "For we see that all the ancient wisdom and science was wont to be delivered in that form, as may be seen by the parables of Solomon, and by the aphorisms of Hippocrates, and the moral verses of Theogenes and Phocylides; but chiefly the precedent of the civil law which hath taken the same course with their rules, did confirm me in my opinion." In other words, the precedent of the civil (which was subsequent to the days of Solomon and Hippocrates) aided him in his judgment in this matter. We find him, in order, giving Hippocrates the second place to the inspired and wisest of men. There can be little doubt that Hippocrates' work on Airs, Waters and Places and his work on Epidemics was the germ of Lord Bacon's work on the Natural History of Winds. In his work on the Advancement of Learning, p. 172, vol. 1, he does not hesitate to place Hippocrates among the names of Aristotle, Plato, Democrates, Euclides, Archimedes as a philosopher and a man of science. The highest compliment in all his works which we find is paid to the memory of Hippocrates. In his work, entitled "History of Life and Death," sec. 19, p. 484, vol. 3, he says: "Hippocrates Cous, the famous physician, lived one hundred and four years, and approved and accredited his own art by so long a life; a man that coupled learning and wisdom together, very conversant in experience and observation; one that haunted not after words or methods, but served the very nerves of science and so propounded them.” We think sufficient reason has been given to believe that "Lord Verulam" himself is indebted to Hippocrates for his first impressions on inductive science, and drew from him his whole course of demonstration in learning and the sciences. And it is no wonder that we find him saying sec. 117: “And as we pretend not to found a sect, so do we neither offer nor promise particular effects, which may occasion some to object to us, that since we often speak of effects and consider every thing in its relation to that end, we ought also to give some earnest of producing them." He says in sec. 116: "Our determination is that trying whether we can lay a firmer foundation and extend to a greater distance the boundaries of human power and dignity." We cannot doubt that Lord Bacon believed, that it was not for him to found a new sect in inductive and experimental philosophy. This species of philosophy we find running through all the works of Hippocrates, which we consider to be the germ of all inductive science-such as cannot be found in any works anterior to his time, and none so fully since his time, till the works of Lord Bacon made their appearance. As Lord Bacon treated the philosophy of Aristotle, so we find Hippocrates treating the philosophy of Pythagoras and others of his time. Lord Bacon says (Organon sec. 96), that natural philosophy was rendered "impure and corrupted by logic in the school of Aristotle, by natural theology in that of Plato, by mathematics in the second school of Plato." We cannot close this examination of the claims of Hippocrates to the first place in the history of the world as a man of true science, without the addition we must claim for him—the character of a truly virtuous man. This we have already hinted at in the frequent notices of the duty of a physician, to do good and not to do harm. In his oath to which his pupils had to subscribe, we find an exponent of his religious and moral character, making all due allowance for his living in the times and in the midst of pagan Greece. In his oath his pupils were sworn to treat their teachers with a respect equal to parental regard; to give their offspring gratuitous instruction in the art and treat them as brothers; fidelity in their cure and treatment of their patients; never to aid in producing abortion; to keep themselves free from the guilt of any corrupt and immoral act and from the seduction of females; to keep all those secrets which properly belong to the profession; and he is sworn to say, that "With purity and with holiness I will pass my life and practice my art." When we consider the corruption of the age in connection with the opinions inculcated by Aristotle in his Politics b. 7, chap. 16, where he recommends, in case when parents have more children than they can care for, that abortion should be practiced in the incipient state of pregnancy-we may boast of him as well worthy to be called the Father of Medicine. His treatment of diseases was that of great caution, being of an expectant character, which brought upon him the contemptuous remark of Asclepiades, which he denominated "the contemplation of death." In surgery his treatment was somewhat different. In injuries of the brain he never waited for the appearance of dangerous symptoms, but used the trephine (modiolus) immediately after an injury of the head, evidently as a prevention of danger by delay. It was a remark made by an old historian of the eighth century (Paterculus), that "great men of every class in arts, sciences, policy and war are generally contemporaries." So we may say as to Greece, when in the height of its glory for literature, philosophy, science and the arts. Pericles was her statesman, Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon her historians, Socrates and Plato her philosophers, Aristophanes, Euripides and Pindar her poets, Phidias her artist. At the same time that these ancient worthies were engaged in interesting the world with their ingenuity, wisdom and wit, Hippocrates is seen breaking away from the mystical philosophy and vain hypothesis and superstition, which had given character and destiny to his art. At the same time he brought before the world in his works and by instruction at the school of Cos, a new course to be pursued for thought and action in medicine, and formed a basis and commenced the superstructure for medicine on principles, then first known to the world in science, that of experimental philosophy. Mathematics was alone his contemporary and companion in philosophizing from known facts and principles based on axioms and postulates, founded in reason and practical observation-generalizing facts in so clear and comprehensive a manner, as to be able for all practical purposes to arrive at conclusions in the absence of a minute and elementary knowledge of things with wonderful accuracy. All that the future has done, has been to develop more fully and carry out with greater perfection the great fundamental doctrines he has left us. Thus we see twenty-two centuries ago, when Hippocrates separated philosophy and superstition from medicine and made all hypothesis subservient to facts known only by experience and observation, thus laying down a system for experimental philosophy, and being the first attempt of the kind known in the history of the world aside from mathematics. Furthermore, as we must see in his example for a true course of reasoning to be pursued in medicine, we have a basis for true reasoning given for every other science, being a system of induction from facts known, the germ of all true scientific knowledge. We feel that Hippocrates ought to have the first place among philosophers and to be regarded as the Father of all true Philosophy. Lord Bacon wrote more extensively, but his philosophy is the same in kind and method with that of Hippocrates. The time will come, if it has not already, when the merits of Hippocrates will make him not only a rival with Lord Bacon, but his master and instructor. "Them long the tyrant power Contemn her terrors and unfold the heaven's truth. |