Hippocrates

“ For if a man by magical arts and sacrifices will bring down the moon, and darken the sun, and induce storms, or fine weather, I should not believe that there was anything divine, but human, in these things, provided the power of the divine were overpowered by human knowledge and subjected to it. But perhaps it will be said, these things are not so, but, not withstanding, men being in want of the means of life, invent many and various things, and devise many contrivances for all other things, and for this disease, in every phase of the disease, assigning the cause to a god. ”

“ So that the first inventors, pursuing their investigations properly, and by a suitable train of reasoning, according to the nature of man, made their discoveries, and thought the Art worthy of being ascribed to a god, as is the established belief. For they did not suppose that the dry or the moist, the hot or the cold, or any of these are either injurious to man, or that man stands in need of them, but whatever in each was strong, and more than a match for a man's constitution, whatever he could not manage, that they held to be hurtful, and sought to remove. ”

“ Plato taught “that God, matter, and form, are the originals of all things:—that matter is increate and incorruptible, neither fire, nor water, nor any of the principles nor elements, but a substance capable of form and subject to fabrication: that when rude and deprived of every quality of configuration, God, the artificer, formed the universe from it. He taught, that matter is the original of all bodies, that it was stamped with the impression of forms, and hence were produced the elements, namely, fire, water, earth, and air.” ”

“ One may derive information from the regimen of persons in good health what things are proper; for if it appear that there is a great difference whether the diet be so and so, in other respects, but more especially in the changes, how can it be otherwise in diseases, and more especially in the most acute? But it is well ascertained that even a faulty diet of food and drink steadily persevered in, is safer in the main as regards health than if one suddenly change it to another. ”

“ For when, the winter being southerly and the body hot, the blood and veins are not properly constringed; a spring that is northerly, dry, and cold, having come on, the brain when it should have been expanded and purged, by the coryza and hoarseness is then constringed and contracted, so that the summer and the heat occurring suddenly, and a change supervening, these diseases fall out. And such cities as lie well to the sun and winds, and use good waters, feel these changes less, but such as use marshy and pooly waters, and lie well both as regards the winds and the sun, these all feel it more. ”

“ First of all, a natural talent is required; for, when Nature opposes, everything else is in vain; but when Nature leads the way to what is most excellent, instruction in the art takes place, which the student must try to appropriate to himself by reflection, becoming an early pupil in a place well adapted for instruction. He must also bring to the task a love of labor and perseverance, so that the instruction taking root may bring forth proper and abundant fruits. ”

“ I SWEAR by Apollo the physician, and Aesculapius, and Health, and All-heal, and all the gods and goddesses, that, according to my ability and judgment, I will keep this Oath and this stipulation– to reckon him who taught me this Art equally dear to me as my parents, to share my substance with him, and relieve his necessities if required; to look upon his offspring in the same footing as my own brothers, and to teach them this art, if they shall wish to learn it, without fee or stipulation; ”

“ And now, having concluded my review of these Books of Epidemics, I will venture to affirm, without fear of contradiction, that when we look to the importance and rarity of the matters contained in them, the work, even at the present day, is perfectly unrivalled. That the books are the composition of different hands must be admitted, but altogether the contents of them bear the imprint of the mind and spirit of Hippocrates, and evince a talent for the cultivation of medicine which has never been surpassed. What a noble people the Greeks must have been in the days of Themistocles and Pericles! ”

“ But on that account, I say, we ought not to reject the ancient Art, as if it were not, and had not been properly founded, because it did not attain accuracy in all things, but rather, since it is capable of reaching to the greatest exactitude by reasoning, to receive it and admire its discoveries, made from a state of great ignorance, and as having been well and properly made, and not from chance. ”

“ But with regard to the most obscure and difficult diseases, a judgment is to be formed rather from opinion than art; and it is in such cases that experience differs much from inexperience. And it is a most important consideration to determine what is the cause of diseases, and what the beginning and fountain-head, as it were, of the evils in the body; for if one be acquainted with the cause of the disease, he may be able to apply the suitable remedies to the affections of the body, judging of diseases from their contraries: for this mode of cure is that which is most in accordance with nature. ”

“ And here I know that physicians are in the practice of doing the very reverse of what is proper, for they all wish, at the commencement of diseases, to starve their patients for two, three, or more days, and then to administer the ptisans and drinks; and perhaps it appears to them reasonable that, as a great change has taken place in the body, it should be counteracted by another great change. Now, indeed, to produce a change is no small matter, but the change must be effected well and cautiously, and after the change the administration of food must be conducted still more so. ”

“ The quotidian, tertian, and quartan fevers, seem to me no less sacred and divine in their origin than this disease, although they are not reckoned so wonderful. And I see men become mad and demented from no manifest cause, and at the same time doing many things out of place; and I have known many persons in sleep groaning and crying out, some in a state of suffocation, some jumping up and fleeing out of doors, and deprived of their reason until they awaken, and afterward becoming well and rational as before, although they be pale and weak ”

“ MEDICINE is of all the Arts the most noble; but, owing to the ignorance of those who practice it, and of those who, inconsiderately, form a judgment of them, it is at present far behind all the other arts. Their mistake appears to me to arise principally from this, that in the cities there is no punishment connected with the practice of medicine (and with it alone) except disgrace, and that does not hurt those who are familiar with it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Part XII Wherefore, I say, that such constitutions as suffer quickly and strongly from errors in diet, are weaker than others that do not; and that a weak person is in a state very nearly approaching to one in disease; but a person in disease is the weaker, and it is, therefore, more likely that he should suffer if he encounters anything that is unseasonable. It is difficult, seeing that there is no such accuracy in the Art, to hit always upon what is most expedient, and yet many cases occur in medicine which would require this accuracy, as we shall explain. ”

“ It is the brain which is the messenger to the understanding. For when the man draws the breath into himself, it passes first to the brain, and thus the air is distributed to the rest of the body, leaving in the brain its acme, and whatever has sense and understanding. For if it passed first to the body and last to the brain, then having left in the flesh and veins the judgment, when it reached the brain it would be hot, and not at all pure, but mixed with the humidity from flesh and blood, so as to be no longer pure. ”

“ Having brought all these requisites to the study of medicine, and having acquired a true knowledge of it, we shall thus, in traveling though the cities, be esteemed physicians not only in name but in reality. But inexperience is a bad treasure, and a bad fund to those who possess it, whether in opinion or reality, being devoid of self-reliance and contentedness, and the nurse both of timidity and audacity. For timidity betrays want of powers, and audacity a want of skill. ”

“ Wherefore it appears to me necessary to every physician to be skilled in nature, and strive to know, if he would wish to perform his duties, what man is in relation to the articles of food and drink, and to his other occupations, and what are the effects of each of them to every one. And it is not enough to know simply that cheese is a bad article of food, as disagreeing with whoever eats of it to satiety, but what sort of disturbance it creates, and wherefore, and with what principle in man it disagrees ”

“ Whoever would wish to discover the cause why this universe was framed, would not be far from the truth, in my opinion, if he said with one of the ancients, that the Father and Maker of it is good, and for that reason he spared not to impart of his most excellent nature to a substance having nothing beautiful in itself, but possessing the capacity of becoming all things. ”

“ Of all the diseases the acute are the most painful and the most fatal, and they require the greatest care and the most accurate treatment. No additional mischief should, at all events, be inflicted by the physician, but he must do the patient as much good as lies in his power; and if the physician treats the case properly, and the patient sinks under the weight of the disease, it will not be the physician’s fault; but if, while the physician does not treat nor understand the disease properly, the patient fall a victim to the disease, the physician will then be to blame. ”

“ But I think that of all the qualities heat and cold exercise the least operation in the body, for these reasons: as long time as hot and cold are mixed up with one another they do not give trouble, for the cold is attempered and rendered more moderate by the hot, and the hot by the cold; but when the one is wholly separate from the other, then it gives pain; and at that season when cold is applied it creates some pain to a man, but quickly, for that very reason, heat spontaneously arises in him without requiring any aid or preparation. ”

“ It cannot have escaped the most careless observation what changes the great pabulum, water, undergoes in the process of vegetation—how it is converted into various woods, and barks, and leaves, and flowers, all of which are resolvable, by the process of decay, into air, or reducible into earth. It is also well known that, although a more unfrequent occurrence, all the solid parts of a tree may undergo a mutation into rock, that is to say, may become petrified. But it is in the higher classes of animals that these changes of simple matter admit of the greatest variety. ”

“ Thus, for example, hunger is a disease; for whatever afflicts man is called a disease. What, then, is the cure of hunger? Whatever will allay hunger, that is to say, food, and by it the other is to be cured. Again, drink cures thirst; and, moreover, evacuation cures repletion, and repletion evacuation, and rest labor, and labor rest; and, in a word, the contraries are the cure of contraries. For medicine consists of addition and subtraction—the subtraction of what is redundant, and the addition of what is deficient. And he that does these things best, is the best physician ”

“ It was the necessity, he says, [39] which men in the first stages of society must have felt of ascertaining the properties of vegetable productions as articles of food that gave rise to the science of Dietetics; and the discovery having been made that the same system of regimen does not apply in a disordered as in a healthy condition of the body, men felt themselves compelled to study what changes of the aliment are proper in disease; and it was the accumulation of facts bearing on this subject which gave rise to the art of Medicine. ”

“ Then such waters as flow to the rising sun, must necessarily be clear, fragrant, soft, and delightful to drink, in such a city. For the sun in rising and shining upon them purifies them, by dispelling the vapors which generally prevail in the morning. ”

“ To say that the soul is fire, is as if one were to call a saw or a wimble the artisan or his art, because his work is accomplished in co-operation with these instruments. From this it appears why animals stand in need of heat. ”

“ The changes of the seasons, too, are not great nor violent, for, in fact, they change gradually; and therefore their figures resemble one another, as they all equally use the same food, and the same clothing summer and winter, respiring a humid and dense atmosphere, and drinking water from snow and ice; neither do they make any laborious exertions, for neither body nor mind is capable of enduring fatigue when the changes of the seasons are not great. ”

“ In that part of the universe where Nature and Generation exert their powers, it is necessary that there should be these three things: In the first place, that thing which being tangible furnishes a body to everything which comes into existence. ”

“ Nowadays we have abandoned all general rules of practice, and profess to be guided solely by experience; but how variable and uncertain are its results in the present case! I myself—albeit but verging towards the decline of life—can well remember the time when a physician would have run the risk of being indicted for culpable homicide if he had ventured to bleed a patient in common fever; about twenty-five years ago venesection in fever, and in almost every disease, was the established order of the day ”

“ It is an elaborate defense of the art of medicine against the attacks of those who maintain that it is no art at all, or one of an uncertain nature. According to the author’s definition, the aim of the physician should be to remove the pains of the sick, to blunt the intensity of diseases, and not to interfere with those that are mastered by disease, as knowing that medicine can be of no avail in such a case. ”

“ In conclusion, I would beg leave to remark that, if the work of Hippocrates, in its present form, appear defective when compared with what a modern work on the same subject would be expected to be, it has also peculiar traits which would hardly be matched in a modern composition. In a modern work we might have a greater abundance of particular facts, and a more copious detail of individual observations, but would there be such an exuberance of general truths, of grand results, and of original reflections? ”