86 Greek Medicine 



a common bond which was, historically if not actually, related 

 to temple worship. Physicians leagued together in the name of 

 a god, as were the Asclepiadae, might escape, and did escape, 

 the baser theurgic elements of temple medicine. Of these they 

 were as devoid as a modem Catholic physician might be 

 expected to be free from the absurdities of Lourdes. But the 

 extreme cult of prognosis among the Coans may not improbably 

 be traced back to the medical lore of the temple soothsayers 

 whose divine omens were replaced by indications of a physical 

 nature in the patient himself. 1 We are tempted too to link 

 it with that process of astronomical and astrological prognosis 

 practised in the Mesopotamian civilizations from which Ionia 

 imitated and derived so much. Religion had thus the same 

 relation to medicine that it would have with a modern ' reli- 

 gious ' medical man as suggesting the motive and determining 

 the general direction of his practice though without influence 

 on the details and method. 



During the development of the Coan medical school along 

 these lines in the sixth and fifth centuries, there was going on 

 a most remarkable movement at the very other extreme of the 

 Greek world. Into the course and general importance of Sici- 

 lian philosophy it is not our place to enter, but that extraordinary 

 movement was not without its repercussion on medical theory 

 and practice. Very important in this direction was Empedocles 

 of Agrigentum (c. 500-^. 4303.0.). His view that the blood is 

 the seat of the ' innate heat ', tpfyvTov Otp^ov, he took from folk 

 belief l the blood is the life ' and this innate heat he closely 

 identified with soul. More profitable was his doctrine that 

 breathing takes place not only through what are now known as 

 the respiratory passages but also through the pores of the skin. 



1 There is a discussion of the relation of the Asclepiadae to temple 

 practice in an article by E. T. Withington, ' The Asclepiadae and the Priest 

 of Asclepius,' in Studies in the History and Method of Science, edited by 

 Charles Singer, vol. ii, Oxford, 1921. 



