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.

1. On Ancient Medicine. 2. The Prognostics. 3. The Aphorisms. 4. The Epidemics, i., jii. 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

Surgery. 11. On Injuries of the Head. 12. The Oath. 13. The Law.

Class II.-The Writings of POLYBUS.

I. 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.

I. 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 Fætus. 13. Of the Eighth Month Fetus.

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 Super fætation.

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.

HIPPOCRATES

ON ANCIENT MEDICINE

WHOEVER having undertaken to speak or write on Medicine, have first laid down for themselves some hypothesis to their argument, such as hot, or cold, or moist, or dry, or whatever else they choose (thus reducing their subject within a narrow compass, and supposing only one or two original causes of diseases or of death among mankind), are all clearly mistaken in much that they say; and this is the more reprehensible as relating to an art which all men avail themselves of on the most important occasions, and the good operators and practitioners in which they hold in especial honor. For there are practitioners, some bad and some far otherwise, which, if there had been no such thing as Medicine, and if nothing had been investigated or found out in it, would not have been the case, but all would have been equally unskilled and ignorant of it, and everything concerning the sick would have been directed by chance. But now it is not so; for, as in all the other arts, those who practise them differ much from one another in dexterity and knowledge, so is it in like manner with Medicine. Wherefore I have not thought that it stood in need of an empty hypothesis, like those subjects which are occult and dubious, in attempting to handle which it is necessary to use some hypothesis; as, for example, with regard to things above us and things below the earth; if any one should treat of these and undertake to declare how they are constituted, the reader or hearer could not find out, whether what is delivered be true or false; for there is nothing which can be referred to in order to discover the truth.

But all these requisites belong of old to Medicine, and an origin and way have been found out, by which many and elegant discoveries have been made, during a length of time, and others will yet be found out, if a person possessed of the proper ability, and knowing those discoveries which have been made, should proceed from them to prosecute his investigations. But whoever, rejecting and despising all these, attempts to pursue another course and form of inquiry, and says he has discovered anything, is deceived himself and deceives others, for the thing is impossible. And for what reason it is impossible, I will now endeavor to explain, by stating and showing what the art really is. From this it will be manifest that discoveries cannot possibly be made in any other way. And most especially, it appears to me, that whoever treats of this art should treat of things which are familiar to the common people. For of nothing else will such a one have to inquire or treat, but of the diseases under which the common people have labored, which diseases and the causes of their origin and departure, their increase and decline, illiterate persons cannot easily find out themselves, but still it is easy for them to understand these things when discovered and expounded by others. For it is nothing more than that every one is put in mind of what had occurred to himself. But whoever does not reach the capacity of the illiterate vulgar and fails to make them listen to him, misses his mark. Wherefore, then, there is no necessity for any hypothesis.

For the art of Medicine would not have been invented at first, nor would it have been made a subject of investigation (for there would have been no need of it), if when men are indisposed, the same food and other articles of regimen which they eat and drink when in good health were proper for them, and if no others were preferable to these. But now necessity itself made medicine to be sought out and discovered by men, since the same things when administered to the sick, which agreed with them when in good health, neither did nor do agree with them. But to go still further back, I hold that the diet and food which people in health now use would not have been discovered, provided it had suited with man to eat and drink in like manner as the ox, the horse, and all other animals, except man, do of the productions of the earth, such as fruits, weeds, and grass; for from such things these animals grow, live free of disease, and require no other kind of food. And, at first, I am of opinion that man used the same sort of food, and that the present articles of diet had been discovered and invented only after a long lapse of time. For