symmetrically."1 Here we get a glimpse of the elegant and fastidious Greek, graceful in figure, movement, dress, and language.

This fine attention to decorum of attire is a natural attendant of the high sense of moral purity which Hippocrates inculcated in his writings and displayed in his life. "I swear by the physician, Apollo," so runs the vow which he exacted from the aspirant to the ministry of the temple over which he presided—" and Æsculapius, and Hygæa, and Panacea, that, according to my ability, I will keep this oath and this stipulation . . 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. . . . . 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 of all men in all times; and should I trespass and violate this oath may the reverse be my lot."2

If the respect of all times be a voucher for the fidelity with which this vow was kept by its framer, no man has a better claim than Hippocrates to the Homeric epithet of "the unblemished." Yet, strange as it may appear to those unread in the history of medicine, not even the reputation of Hippocrates saved him from an accusation, invented Adams' Hippoc., p. 475. 2 Ibid., p. 779.

by the malice and jealousy of his professional enemies, of a crime of almost incredible enormity, taking all the circumstances of the case into consideration. They accused him of having set fire to the library of the Temple of Cnidus after he had extracted all its treasures. According to this reading of his character, he was base enough to purloin all that was valuable from a rival school for his own selfish purpose; and to theft he added the crimes of sacrilege and arson-in short, that he was a miscreant whose career would have terminated on a gallows, had he not saved his ignominious life by a timely flight.' This may be a lesson to us not to place implicit confidence in the accusations that rivals of the present day are in the habit of proclaiming against those who have the courage to avow a belief in medical novelties, especially if such novelties should have the unpardonable sin of popularity.

The character of Hippocrates, his political opinions, and his social position, are comparatively easy for us to appreciate. It is much more difficult to represent, with any accuracy and distinctness, his notions about physical and metaphysical subjects; we combine the two, for it was not the way in his day to separate them. From his own writings it would be impossible to obtain materials for a just conception of how he dealt with these problems, and we are compelled to grope our way by the side-lightsfaint enough of his contemporaries and immediate predecessors and successors. Here we encounter the difficulty of delineating a mist or vapour. We can get no distinct outlines in ancient physics. It is very difficult to apprehend the ideas of Aristotle upon this subject, and even he—the most scientific mind of his, or perhaps any age—is obscure when he treats of matter.

1 Pliny, who seems to be the greatest of literary gobemouches, mentions the story without a token of disbelief. Hist.

The notions of this great

Nat. XXIX., referred to by Sprengel and
Adams,

2

thinker seem to be, that there are two fundamental conceptions about existence of any kind, the one-existence possible, the other-existence actual. The first is what we may call the raw material-primæval matter, devoid of all qualities, and without form; the second is what we may call formative force, by which the possible is converted into the actual.1 The machinery by which all that is actual is raised out of this passive ocean of the possible, according to the Pythagoreans-and their doctrines held sway generally on this subject with slight modifications—was what they called "the contraries; "these were heat and cold, dryness and moisture. But these contraries could not reside in mere formless matter; something more definite was required. Hence they arrived at Fire, Water, Air, and Earth, the four Elements familiar to us at the present day. Such is probably something like the general conception of the universe held by Hippocrates, although it is not unlikely he may have accepted some of the notions of his teacher, Democritus, which were a sort of dim antetype of what in modern philosophy is known as the atomic theory, but which bear a nearer resemblance to "the Vortices" of Descartes. "Atoms and vacuum were the beginning of the universe," according to Democritus. "The atoms were infinite in magnitude and number, and were borne about through the universe in endless revolutions. Thus they produced all the combinations that exist-fire, water, air, and earth; for that all these things are only combinations of certain atoms, which combinations are incapable of being effected by external circumstances, and are unchangeable by reason of their solidity." This theory of atoms, in constant revolution in all space and in all bodies, is one which we

3

The Ethics of Aristotle, illustrated with Essays and Notes, by Sir A. Grant. Vol. I., p. 185.

2 Ocellus Lucanus on the Universe, quoted by Adams, p. 133.

3 Diogen. Laert., p. 394.

shall find turning up so frequently in a variety of forms in medicine, that it is of great interest and importance to be acquainted with the exact form the idea is said, by the earliest writers, to have assumed in the mind of its original propounder. In this way we may avoid one great source of historical error, which consists in taking for identical, opinions of different ages which happen to go by the same name. To what extent Hippocrates agreed with or differed from the philosophers of his age, in respect to the general theories of the origin of matter, we cannot form even a conjecture; but we know from various passages that he held some doctrine of elements, and probably it was the one commonly received at the time. The following quotation' Galen considers to be from a genuine treatise : "In the universe there are four elements-fire, air, water, and earth; and in the living body, there are four humoursblack bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm. Out of the excess, or deficiency, or misproportion of these four humours there arise diseases; by restoring the correct proportion, diseases are cured." 2 Here we have the first exposition of the great doctrine of the humours; a doctrine which has, more than any other or all others put together, affected the development of medicine as a practical art. It is, as we see, of as purely hypothetical an origin as that of the four elements, and as unworthy of reliance in the treatment of diseases, as the other in the construction of railways; yet it is by no means altogether exploded even now, and both in the popular and professional mind exerts a powerful influence in perpetuating the reign of purgatives. How directly this hypothesis affected the practice of Hippocrates, we may illustrate by a sentence from his treatise upon the food proper in acute diseases. Speaking of an acidulated drink, he says, "In a word, the acidity of vinegar agrees rather with those who are troubled with

On the Nature of Man.

2

Sprengel, Vol. I., p. 377.

bitter bile, than with those whose bile is black; for the bitter principle is dissolved in it and turned to phlegm by being suspended in it." That is, there is a restoration of the balance of the humours, by the conversion of yellow bile into phlegm. Thus even the wise, cautious, practical philosopher is unable to withstand altogether the influence of prevailing opinion.

The inaccuracy of the Greek notions upon physics was owing to the absence of materials on which to employ their faculties of observation and reflection, not to any defect of mental power. They had just emerged from the "dim water world" of Thales, and with uncertain steps began to explore the margin of the dry land. No force of speculation advanced them over the surface of the earth. They could and did discover all the properties of circles and triangles with, or even without, the help of a piece of chalk and a board. Their geometry exercises the intellects of our own day, but their knowledge of geography was almost nothing. No amount of thinking could ever inform them that there existed such a place as Britain: to know of it and its shape required that either one of them should go thither, or a Briton come thence to tell them about it. Before this was possible, a thousand discoveries connected with navigation had to be made, and Time was one of the elements required for the solution of such problems. The vagueness, then, of the Greek physics, was the necessary result of the period in which the early philosophers lived; not of a difficulty inherent in the subject. It is the reverse with metaphysical speculations. We know the relation between mind and matter no more than the Greeks; we have the same data as they had; knowledge here is not cumulative; no amount of railway journeys, or electric telegraphs, or steam printing, or even parliamentary debates, sheds one ray of additional light upon the

1 Adams' Hippoc., p. 302.