94 Greek Medicine 



countenance proceed from these. But if none of these be said 

 to exist, and the symptoms do not subside in that time, be it 

 known Jor certain that death is at hand.' 1 



Again, in the work On the Art [oj Medicine] we read : ' I hold 

 it to be physicianly to abstain from treating those who are 

 overwhelmed by disease ', 2 a prudent if inhumane procedure 

 among a people who might regard the doctor's powers as partak- 

 ing of the nature of magic, and perhaps a wise course to follow at 

 this day in some places not very far from Cos. Yet in the book 

 On Diseases we are advised even in the presence of an incurable 

 disease ' to give relief with such treatment as is possible '. 3 



Furthermore, works by authors of the Hippocratic school 

 stand sometimes in a position of direct controversy with each 

 other. Thus in the treatise On the Heart an experiment is set 

 forth which is held to prove that a part at least of imbibed fluid 

 passes into the cavity of the lung and thence to the parts of the 

 body, a popular error in antiquity which recurs in Plato's 

 Timaeus. This view, however, is specifically held to be fallacious 

 by the author of the work On Diseases,, who is supported by 

 a polemical section in the surviving Menon fragment. 



Passages like these have convinced all students that we have 

 to deal in this collection with a variety of works written at 

 different dates by different authors and under different con- 

 ditions, a state that may be well understood when we reflect 

 that among the Greeks medicine was a progressive study for 

 a far longer period of time than has yet been the case in the 

 Western world. An account of such a collection can therefore 

 only be given in the most general fashion. The system or 

 systems of medicine that we shall thus attempt to describe was 

 in vogue up to the Alexandrian period, that is, to the beginning 

 of the third century B.C. 



1 Littre, ii. 1125 Kiihlewein, i. 79. The texts vary: Kiihlewein is 

 followed except in the last sentenc . 



2 Ilepi T%vi]s, 3- 3 Hepi vov(TQ)V a', 6. 



