Besides being sought for by the republic of Athens, to which he doubtless was proud to render any aid he could, Hippocrates was invited by the great King of Persia, but refused to go. There seems no reason for disbelieving this; it rests upon respectable testimony, and is quite in accordance with the practice of the Persian monarch and the sentiments of Greek physicians. For example, there exists a very curious correspondence between King Darius and Heraclitus of Ephesus. The royal missive runs thus, after a flourish:-"King Darius, the son of Hystaspes, wishes to enjoy the benefit of hearing you discourse, and of receiving some Grecian instruction. Come, therefore, quickly to my sight and to my royal palace," &c. To which the respondent, without a word of thanks, replies, "I will never come to Persia, since I am quite contented with alittle, and live as best suits my own inclination."

For ex

That Hippocrates was of the same mind may be gathered from various passages of his works. ample, when speaking of the difference between the Asiatics and the Greeks, he says: "For these reasons it appears to me the Asiatic race is feeble, and, further, owing to their laws; for monarchy prevails in the greater part of Asia; and when men are not their own masters, nor independent, but are the slaves of others, it is not a matter of consideration with them how they may acquire military discipline, but how they may seem not to be warlike; for the dangers are not equally shared, since they must serve as soldiers, perhaps endure fatigue, and die for their masters, far from their children, their wives, and other friends; and whatever noble and manly actions they may perform lead only to the aggrandisement of their masters, whilst the fruits which they reap are dangers and death."" What a noble picture of a free over a slave State! No 2 Adams' Hippoc., p. 210.

1 Diogen. Laert., p. 380.

wonder that the mind which conceived it should revolt from the idea of serving a tyrant !'

It was probably a profound respect for mental and moral as well as political liberty that kept Hippocrates free from the slightest taint of priestly assumption in circumstances which would have made it almost pardonable. Although he was of the order of priests, born and bred in the temple of the god from whom he was believed to be descended, and himself reverenced as a divinity, yet, strange to say! all his writings are characterized by wonderful modesty, and his claims to credit invariably rest upon appeals to the reason, and never either to the passions, or to respect for blind authority Indeed, the most striking feature of this great man's mind was common-sense. We may hesitate to award him the attribute of genius-certainly he is not pre-eminent among men of genius; and if we compare his writings with those of Bacon, for example, we feel disappointed at the absence of this quality; but for sense, at least, he equals Bacon, or perhaps any man that ever lived. Hippocrates had the sense to see through the superstition of his age, and the more uncommon sense to let it alone, testifying, by his speech and life, to the truth he believed in, and leaving to others the exposure of errors. It was his common-sense that led him to give such minute details of how the physician should conduct himself, even to the arrangement of his dress. "The robe," he says, when describing an operation, "is to be thrown in a neat and orderly manner over the elbows and shoulders, equally and

In our own days we have had an example of a celebrated geologist refusing to return from America, his adopted, to France, his native country, although tempted by a personal and flattering appeal from the Emperor Napoleon III.

2 The term common-sense is often understood as being equivalent to "the

average amount of intelligence," instead of representing, as it does, the sensus communis, or universal faculty of apprehending truth, by an intuitive process, and pronouncing an infallible judgment upon every proposition that comes legitimately within the sphere of its jurisdiction.-See Sir W. Hamilton's edition of Reid.

symmetrically."

Here we get a

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 1 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.

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.