of the Inductive Philosophy; all his descriptions of disease are evidently derived from patient observation of its phenomena, and all his rules of practice are clearly based on experience. Of the fallaciousness of experience by itself he was well aware, however, and has embodied this great truth in a memorable aphorism, and therefore he never exempts the apparent results of experience from the strict scrutiny of reason. Above all others, Hippocrates was strictly the physician of experience and common sense. In short, the basis of his system was a rational experience, and not a blind empiricism so that the Empirics in after ages had no good grounds for claiming him as belonging to their sect.

One of the most distinguishing characteristics, then, of the Hippocratic system of medicine, is the importance attached in it to prognosis, under which was comprehended a complete acquaintance with the previous and present condition of the patient, and the tendency of the disease. To the overstrained system of Diagnosis practised in the school of Cnidos, agreeably to which diseases were divided and subdivided arbitrarily into endless varieties, Hippocrates was decidedly opposed; his own strong sense and high intellectual cultivation having, no doubt, led him to the discovery, that to accidental varieties of diseased action there is no limit, and that what is indefinite cannot be reduced to science.

Nothing strikes one as a stronger proof of his nobility of soul, when we take into account the early period in human cultivation at which he lived, and his descent from a priestly order, than the contempt which he everywhere expresses for ostentatious charlatanry, and his perfect freedom from all popular superstition. Of amulets and complicated machines to impose on the credulity of the ignorant multitude, there is no mention in any part of his works. All diseases he traces to natural causes, and counts it impiety to maintain that any one more than another is an infliction from the Divinity. How strikingly the Hippocratic system differs from that of all other nations in their infantine state must be well known to every person who is well acquainted with the early history of medicine. His theory of medicine was further based on the physical philosophy of the ancients, more especially on the doctrines

then held regarding the elements of things, and the belief in the existence of a spiritual essence diffused through the whole works of creation, which was regarded as the agent that presides over the acts of generation, and which constantly strives to preserve all things in their natural state, and to restore them when they are preternaturally deranged. This is the principle which he called Nature, and which he held to be a vis medicatrix. "Nature," says he, or at least one of his immediate followers says, "is the physician of diseases."

Though his belief in this restorative principle would naturally dispose him to watch its operations carefully, and make him cautious not to do anything that would interfere with their tendencies to rectify deranged actions, and though he lays it down as a general rule by which the physician should regulate his treatment, "to do good, or at least to do no harm," there is ample evidence that on proper occasions his practice was sufficiently bold and decided. In inflammatory affections of the chest he bled freely, if not, as has been said, ad deliquum animi, and in milder cases he practised cupping with or without scarification. Though in ordinary cases of constipation he merely prescribed laxative herbs, such as the mercury (mercurialis perennis), beet, and cabbage, he had in reserve elaterium, scammony, spurges, and other drastic cathartics, when more potent medicines of this class were indicated. And although when it was merely wished to evacuate upwards in a gentle manner, he was content with giving hyssop and other simple means, he did not fail, when it was desirable to make a more powerful impression, to administer the white hellebore with a degree of boldness, which his successors in the healing art were afraid to imitate. A high authority has expressly stated that he was the discoverer of the principles of derivation and revulsion in the treatment of diseases. Fevers he treated as a general rule, upon the diluent system, but did not fail to administer gentle laxatives, and even to practise venesection in certain cases. When narcotics were indicated, he had recourse to mandragora, henbane, and perhaps to poppyjuice.

In the practice of surgery he was a bold operator. He fearlessly, and as we would now think, in some cases unnecessarily,

perforated the skull with the trepan and the trephine in injuries of the head. He opened the chest also in empyema and hydrothorax. His extensive practice, and no doubt his great familiarity with the accidents occurring at the public games of his country, must have furnished him with ample opportunities of becoming acquainted with dislocations and fractures of all kinds; and how well he had profited by the opportunities which he has enjoyed, every page of his treatises "On Fractures," and "On the Articulations," abundantly testifies. In fact, until within a very recent period, the modern plan of treatment in such cases was not at all to be compared with his skillful mode of adjusting fractured bones, and of securing them by means of waxed bandages. In particular, his description of the accidents which occur at the elbow- and hip-joints will be allowed, even at the present day, to display a most wonderful acquaintance with the subject. In the treatment of dislocations, when human strength was not sufficient to restore the displacement, he skillfully availed himself of all the mechanical powers which were then known. In his views with regard to the nature of club-foot, it might have been affirmed of him a few years ago, that he was twenty-four centuries in advance of his profession when he stated that in this case there is no dislocation, but merely a declination of the foot; and that in infancy, by means of methodical bandaging, a cure may in most cases be effected without any surgical operation. In a word, until the days of Delpech and Stromeyer, no one entertained ideas so sound and scientific on the nature of this deformity as Hippocrates.

M. Littré has made the following distribution of the different works in the Hippocratean Collection:

CLASS I.-The Works which truly belong to HIPPOCRATES. I. On Ancient Medicine. 2. The Prognostics. 3. The Aphorisms. 4. The Epidemics, i., iii. 5. The Regimen in Acute Diseases. 6. On Airs, Waters, and Places. 7. On the Articulations. 8. On Fractures. 9. The Instruments of Reduction (Mochlicus). 10. The Physician's Establishment, or

1 See plate I, page 391.

Surgery. 11. On Injuries of the Head. 12. The Oath.
The Law.

CLASS II.-The Writings of POLYBUS.

13.

1. On the Nature of Man. 2. Regimen of Persons in Health.

CLASS III.-Writings anterior to Hippocrates.

1. The Coan Prænotions. 2. The First Book of Prorrhetics.

CLASS IV.-Writings of the School of Cos,-of the Contemporaries or Disciples of Hippocrates.

1. Of Ulcers. 2. Of Fistulæ. 3. Of Hemorrhoids. 4. Of the Pneuma. 5. Of the Sacred Disease. 6. Of the Places in Man. 7. Of Art. 8. Of Regimen, and of Dreams. 9. Of Affections. 10. Of Internal Affections. II. Of Diseases, i., ii., iii. 12. Of the Seventh Month Fœtus. 13. Of the Eighth Month Fœtus.

CLASS V-Books in which are but Extracts and Notes.
1. Epidemics, ii., iv., v., vi., vii. 2. On the Surgery.

CLASS VI.-Treatises which belong to some unknown author, and form a particular series in the Collection.

1. On Generation. 2. On the Nature of the Infant. 3. On Diseases, iv. 4. On the Diseases of Women. 5. On the Diseases of Young Women. 6. On Unfruitful Women.

CLASS VII.-Writing belonging to LEOPHANES.

On Superfœtation.

CLASS VIII.—Treatises posterior to Hippocrates, and composed about the age of Aristotle and Praxagoras.

1. On the Heart. 2. On Aliment. 3. On Fleshes. 4. On the Weeks. 5. Prorrhetic, ii. 6. On the Glands. 7. A fragment of the piece "On the Nature of Bones."

CLASS IX.-Series of Treatises, of Fragments and of Compilations, which have not been quoted by any ancient critic.

1. On the Physician. 2. On Honorable Conduct. 3. Pre

cepts. 4. On Anatomy. 5. On the Sight. 6. On Dentition. 7. On the Nature of the Woman. 8. On the Excision of the Fœtus. 9. The eighth Section of the Aphorisms. 10. On the Nature of the Bones. II. On Crisis. 12. On Critical Days. 13. On Purgative Medicines.

CLASS X.-Writings now lost, which once formed a part of the Collection:

1. On dangerous Wounds. 2. On Missiles and Wounds. 3. The first Book of Doses-the Small.

CLASS XI.-Apocryphal pieces-Letters and Discourses.