GREEK MEDICINE 



5e v rw Atam/riKo) KOL a 



KOI r^vt]V abj]\oi^ Kal lar'tfyv avay&vKTTOV Kal T:\OVTOV 

 Kal \<>yov aovvarov, uyieia? aTrowr]?. 



HEROPHILOS, a Greek philosopher and physician (c. 300 B.C.), 

 has truly written ' that Science and Art have equally nothing 

 to show, that Strength is incapable of effort, Wealth useless, 

 and Eloquence powerless if Health be wanting '.* All peoples 

 therefore have had their methods of treating those departures 

 from health that we call disease, and among peoples of higher 

 culture such methods have been reduced in most cases to some- 

 thing resembling a system. In antiquity, as now, a variety of 

 such systems were in vogue, and those nations who practised 

 the art of writing from an early date have left considerable 

 records of their medical methods and doctrines. We may 

 thus form a fairly good idea 'of the medical principles of the 

 Mesopotamian, the Egyptian, the Iranian, the Indian, and the 

 Chinese civilizations. Much in these systems, as in the medical 

 procedure of more primitive tribes, was based upon some 

 theory of disease which fitted in with a larger theory of the 

 nature of evil. Of these theories the commonest was and is 

 the demonic, the view that regards deviation from the normal 

 state of health as due either to the attacks of supernatural 

 beings or to their actual entry into the body of the sufferer. 

 A medical system based on such a view is susceptible of great 

 elaboration in a higher civilization, but not being founded on 



1 The works of Herophilus are lost. This fine passage has been preserved 

 for us by Sextus Empiricus, a third-century physician, in his Trpos TOVS 

 fjLudrjfjLfiTtKovs ai>Tippi]TiK.oi, which is in essence an attack on all positive 

 philosophy. It is an entertaining fact that we should have to go to such a 

 v/ork for remains of the greatest anatomist of antiquity. The passage 

 is in the section directed against ethical writers, xi. 50. 



