institutions of Greece and Asia, in the formation of their respective characteristics. Hippocrates attributes an immense influence to climate, as producing, on the one hand, men of valour and enterprise, who preferred death to slavery; and engendering, on the other, an effeminate and cowardly race, the willing slaves of any tyrant. Strange to say, Hippocrates is censured for this by two of his ablest modern expositors-Littrè, a Frenchman, and Dr. Adams, a hardy Caledonian-who seem to be of opinion that it is the discipline that makes the soldier, not the soldier the discipline. On the side of the old Greek versus the modern Frenchman and Scot, we have the great English Bacon, who says, "A man may truly make a judgment that the principal point of greatness in any State is to have a race of military men; therefore, let any prince or State think soberly of his forces, except his militia of natives be of good and valiant soldiers." "As for mercenary forces, all examples show that whatsoever State or prince doth rest upon them, he may spread his feathers for a time, but he will mew them soon after." 1 How triumphantly before 1857 would India have been named, in refutation of this last observation! Since that fatal year, what frightful corroboration of the judgment of the great thinker! what a lesson to heed the thoughts of the wise, whether uttered to day in a newspaper, or in the market-place of Athens two thousand years ago!2 We need say no more of this first treatise of Hippocrates than that it is so pre-eminently judicious, "that," in the words of Dr. Adams, "at the present day it would be difficult to detect our author in a single error of judgment." II. On the Prognostics. This book treats of the value of the symptoms of disease, what they indicate in respect 1 Bacon's Essays on the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates. 2 This was written before the volunteer movement was set on foot, and with the hope of attracting attention, so far as lay in my power, to the importance of some such organization. to the course and issue of the case. It is compiled from the records kept in the temple of Cos, and exhibits Hippocrates' power of induction. It is probably the earliest example of this method of reasoning that exists-certainly the oldest in medicine-and it has never been surpassed, never perhaps equalled, by any of his successors. following may be taken as samples of the work : The "It is well when the patient is found by his physician reclining upon either his right or his left side, having his hands, neck, and legs slightly bent, and the whole body lying in a relaxed state, for thus the most of persons in health recline, and these are the best of postures which most resemble healthy persons. But to lie upon one's back, with the hands, neck, and legs extended, is far less favourable. And if the patient incline forward and sink down to the foot of the bed, it is a still more dangerous symptom; but if he be found with his feet naked and not sufficiently warm, and the hands, neck, and legs tossed about in a disorderly manner and naked, it is bad, for it indicates aberration of intellect. It is a deadly symptom also, when the patient sleeps constantly with his mouth open, having his legs strongly bent and plaited together, while he lies upon his back; and to lie upon one's belly when not habitual to the patient to sleep thus while in good health, indicates delirium, or pain in the abdominal regions. And for a patient to wish to sit erect at the acme of a disease, is a bad symptom in all acute cases, but particularly so in pneumonia.” "Respecting the movements of the hands, I have these observations to make: when, in acute fevers, pneumonia, phrenitis, or headache, the hands are waved before the face, hunting through empty space, as if gathering bits of straw, picking the nap from the coverlid, or tearing chaff from the wall,-all such symptoms are bad and deadly." "Those sweats are the best, in all acute diseases, which occur on the critical days, and completely carry off the fever; those are favourable, too, which, taking place over the whole body, show that the man is bearing the disease better. But those that do not produce this effect are not beneficial. The worst are cold sweats, confined to the head, face, and neck—these, in an acute fever, prognosticate death; or in a milder one, a prolongation of the disease. And sweats which occur over the whole body, with the characters of those confined to the neck, are in like manner bad. Sweats attended with a miliary eruption, and taking place about the neck, are bad. of drops and of vapour, are good. the entire character of sweats, for some are connected with prostration of strength in the body, and some with intensity of inflammation." Sweats in the form One ought to know "All dropsies arising from acute disease are bad; for they do not remove the fever, and are very painful and fatal." "With regard to sleep-as is usual with us in health, the patient should wake during the day and sleep during the night. If this rule be anyways altered, it is so far worse; but there will be little harm provided he sleep in the morning, for the third part of the day; such sleep as takes place after this time is more unfavourable, but the worst of all is to get no sleep, either night or day; for it follows from this symptom, that this insomnolency is connected with sorrow and pains, or that he is about to become delirious." Such are a few specimens of the careful way in which Hippocrates went over the various functions of the body, and noted the differences between their healthy and morbid phenomena, and the indications afforded by the latter of the course and termination of the cases in which they were present. These sentences have been recognized as SO truthful by subsequent writers, as to form a part of the Adams' Hippoc. Prognostics. staple of medical literature; they display a rare combination of powers of observation, description, and generalization. The first deficiency noted by Lord Bacon, in his review of medicine, is "the discontinuance of the ancient and serious diligence of Hippocrates, which used to set down a narrative of the special cases of his patients, and how they proceeded, and how they were judged by recovery or death." This, in fact," wisely writes Dr. Adams, "constitutes the great superiority of the ancient savans over the modern, that the former possessed a much greater talent for apprehending general truths than the latter, who confine their attention to particular facts, and too much neglect the observation of general appearances. I trust no one will be offended if I venture to pronounce, regarding the present condition of our professional literature, that (to borrow an illustration from the logic of Kant) it is altogether cyclopic that is to say, it wants the eye of philosophy; for although we have learned to examine particular objects with greater accuracy than our forefathers did, the sphere of our mental vision, so to speak, is more confined than theirs, and cannot embrace the same enlarged views of general objects.' We now come to the reverse of the medal, and we shall find that while Hippocrates, so long as he pursued the plan of careful observation and induction, was a mighty architect constructing an edifice of cyclopæan magnitude and strength, which the lapse of centuries has rather consolidated, like a vitrified fort, than impaired; so soon as he left this sure method, and resorted to speculation as a guide, he became weak as other men. "For," again to use the words of Bacon, "the wit and mind of man, if it work upon matter, which is the contemplation of the 1 Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning. By Francis, Lord Verulam. Edited by B. Montague, Esq. 1838. P. 171. creatures of God, worketh according to the stuff, and is limited thereby; but if it work upon itself, as the spider worketh his web, then it is endless, and brings forth, indeed, cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance or profit." The test of true induction is experience; any proposition concerning matter, which will not stand this, if legitimately applied, must have been a false or insufficient inference from facts, or an imagination not derived from facts at all. To this latter order belong most of the rules laid down by Hippocrates for the selection and administration of active remedies. He imagined the existence of certain humours— black bile, yellow bile, &c.,-and he imagined that disease depended upon changes, either in the just proportion of these, or that they wandered out of their natural channels, and invaded the territories of their neighbours, that this produced a disturbance in the animal economy; that the perturbation thus set a-going went through a stage of "coction," or cooking, and ended in a "crisis," or judgment ;—that is, Nature's judgment of the patient, according to which he was either absolved, if innocent-that is, if if strong enough-and returned to the world of life; or condemned, if guilty—that is, if weak-and consigned to Pluto's dark domain. The plan Hippocrates steadily pursued was, if possible, to obtain a verdict for the patient by assisting the proper coction of the humours, and getting the judgment on a propitious day. Hence the doctrine of critical days applicable to a limited class of disorders, such as fevers, but applied by him to all acute diseases. Now, as these humours had no existence, it is impossible they could have had any action, and it follows that this great physician really fought with shadows. Unfortunately, it was not the air he beat, but the body of the patient he tormented with drugs, or knife, or fire. His 1 Advancement of Learning, p. 41. |