mind, will, and conscience. What the exact opinions of Hippocrates upon this subject were, it is impossible to gather from his writings; most probably he did not attempt to define them to himself, but accepted a certain vague notion of a ψυχή, οι πνεῦμα, which, in some unknown and unknowable way, exerted a constant influence upon all organic bodies.

We have now dwelt at sufficient length upon the subject, giving it much greater proportion than it occupies in the writings, or than it occupied in the thoughts of the great physician of antiquity; but not greater than is due to its importance as a constantly-recurring influence in the efforts of the human mind to arrive at some solution of the problems which tantalize its efforts to reconcile the seemingly contradictory experience of a creature, who "thinks he was not made to die," to whom immortality seems an ultimate fact of consciousness, but who is linked to a body, liable to a thousand casualties, and subject to a death by which this very consciousness appears to be annihilated-the mystery of the union of Life and Mortality.

There still remain for our consideration, the services of Hippocrates in improving the practice of the art of medicine. He belongs to no sect, although claimed by each as its exclusive possession. From the earliest times there were three principal medical sects; and as the distinctive attributes of these divisions depend upon the preponderance of certain elements of character common to all ages, we find them represented throughout the entire history of the art down to the present day. They used to go by the names of the Dogmatists, or Rationalists, the Empirics, and the Methodists. Let us see in what respect Hippocrates agreed with and differed from each and all of them.

The fundamental principle of the Dogmatists was, that

we cannot cure a disease unless we know its cause. In the words of Celsus, "they held it impossible that any one should know how to cure diseases, if he be ignorant of the causes whence they proceed." A very plausible proposition ! But what are we to understand by the causes of disease? If all that is meant be the external circumstances which induce unhealthy conditions of the human body, then the statement is incontrovertible: it is true that ague would never have been got rid of by draining the pestiferous marsh, unless it had been known that swamps produce that disease. But the Dogmatist went a step further; not only would he say that ague is caused by a swamp, but it is caused by the swamp increasing, to a mischievous amount, the radical moisture of the body; and it must be cured by opposing to it some remedy which shall increase the radical dryness or heat, so as to neutralize the predominant temperament. This was mere guess-work, and such vain hypotheses still hold their place in modern medicine. We may read in the newest books that leprous affections of the skin are owing to an acid state of the blood, and that the proper cure of the disease is the administration of alkalis. All such vagueness Hippocrates rejected, for the following conclusive reasons, worthy of deliberate consideration even by Members of the College of Physicians of London. "I wish," he says,

the discourse to revert to the new method of those who prosecute their inquiries in the art by hypothesis. For if hot or cold, or moist or dry, be that which proves injurious to man, and if the person who would treat him properly must apply cold to the hot, hot to the cold, moist to the dry, and dry to the moist (on the principle of contraries), let me be presented with a man-not, indeed, one of a strong constitution, but one of the weaker and let him eat wheat, such as it is supplied from the thrashingfloor, raw and unprepared, with raw meat, and let him 1 Celsus, Lib. I., Preface.

drink water. By using such a diet, I know that he will suffer much and severely, for he will experience pains, his body will become weak, and his bowels deranged, and he will not subsist long. What remedy, then, is to be provided for one so situated-hot, or cold, or moist, or dry? for it is clear it must be one of these. For according to this principle, if it is one of these which is injuring the patient, it is to be removed by its contrary. But the surest and most obvious remedy is to change the diet which the person used, and instead of wheat to give bread, and instead of raw flesh boiled, and to drink wine in addition to these for by making these changes it is impossible but that he must get better unless completely disorganized by time and diet. What then shall we say? whether that as he suffered from cold, these things being hot were of use to him, or the reverse? I should think this question must prove a puzzler to whomsoever it is put.' An opinion in which we doubt not his readers entirely coincide.

We find, then, that Hippocrates, so far from countenancing the doctrine of curing diseases by applying the contraries to their supposed causes, condemns the notion as utterly absurd. But let us not rush into the opposite error, and because Hippocrates is opposed to the dogma of contraria contrariis, assume that he is in favour of its opposite, similia similibus curantur. In the above quo

tation he is shown as objecting to assuming imaginary causes at all, as subjects of treatment, and consequently, he would object as much to the principle of similarity as opposition. It is true there is a remarkable passage in favour of the doctrines now known as Homœopathic in one of the Hippocratic treatises, which, although of questionable authenticity, is of undoubted antiquity, and has received the greatest respect from all commentators. On it our learned countryman, Dr. Adains, remarks: "It thus

Hippoc. on Ancient Med. p. 169.

appears that the principles both of Allopathy and Homoeopathy are recognized by the author of this treatise.'

Although Hippocrates dealt in this summary style with the obvious false reasonings of the Dogmatists, exposing them with Socratic conciseness and subtilty, yet he was very far indeed from rejecting inference and induction, and the application of a strictly-philosophic method in dealing with difficulties which he was unable to surmount by previous experience. So that when Celsus says he was the first to separate medicine from philosophy, he must mean by the latter term the signification it had at the time of Hippocrates, not at the time when he himself wrote; much less what we mean by philosophy. In fact, as we shall see by-and-by, Hippocrates unconsciously discovered the inductive method, and used it as far as he possibly could, being as much allied to the Dogmatists, whose errors he so mercilessly exposes, as to the Empirics.

The
But

The Empirics suffer from the prejudice of what the name by which they were called came afterwards to signify. term is now deservedly used as one of reproach. originally it meant rather what we should now call the school of experiment and experience. They held that "it is much better to seek relief from things certain and tried, that is, from such remedies as experience in the method of curing has taught us, as is done in other arts; for that neither a husbandman nor a pilot are qualified for their business by reasoning, but by practice; and that these disquisitions have no connection with medicine, may be inferred from the plain fact, that physicians, whose opinions on these matters have been directly opposite to one another, have, notwithstanding, equally restored their patients to health: that this success was to be ascribed to their having derived their methods of cure, not from the occult causes (such as changes in the elements), or the

1 Adams' Hippoc. p. 77.

"1

natural actions (changes in the temperaments) about which they are divided, but from experiments, according as they succeeded in the course of their practice." Now, although Hippocrates says that "experience is fallacious," and therefore "judginent difficult," he would be the last man to discard experience altogether. Indeed, it is impossible to conceive of medicine making a single step without experiment or experience unless we had a revelation. The question is, what the kind of experiment and experience is to be? If we have nothing but these to guide us, how are we to act in new circumstances? The experience which taught us how to treat a sword-cut will not help us to cure the gout. To this the Empiric would reply that the objection, so far as it went, was an inherent difficulty in the acquisition of all knowledge of matters beyond the immediate consciousness of the human mind; and that we must make the best of it by accumulating experience and registering it so as to make it available, and by separating what is essential from what is accidental in the conditions of every case of cure. This they called, technically, "History." When we have no exact parallel to fall back upon in any puzzling case we must take the one nearest to it. Thus the art of medicine formed a tripod, consisting of observation, history, and analogy.2

If the Empirics did not embrace the whole truth, they at least propounded doctrines both true and most important; and it is probable that the severe criticism they have met with is owing more to the violent and exclusive spirit of the teachers, than to the reprehensible character of the teaching. They seem, like not a few moderns, to have slighted large cultivation and exalted the technical above the general endowments of the physician. This circumstance accounts for the admirable observation of Celsus, which

Celsus. Op. cit. 2 Galen de Sect.

Le Clerc, Op. cit.

p. 343. Sprengel, Op. cit. Vol. I. p.

576.