96 Greek Medicine 



about 400 B.C., declares indeed that c physical structure is the 

 basis of medicine ', but the formal treatises on anatomy that 

 we possess from Hippocratic times give the general anatomical 

 standard of the corpus, and it is a very disappointing one. The 

 tract On Anatomy, though probably of much later date (perhaps 

 c. 330 B.C.), is inferior even to the treatise On the Heart (per- 

 haps of about 400 B.C.). 



Physiology and Pathology are almost as much in the back- 

 ground as anatomy in the Hippocratic collection. As a formal 

 discipline and part of medical education we find no trace of 

 these studies among the pre-Alexandrian physicians. But the 

 meagreness of the number of ascertained facts did not prevent 

 much speculation among a people eager to seek the causes of 

 things. Of that speculation we learn much from the fragments 

 of contemporary medical writers and philosophers, from the 

 medical works of the Alexandrian period, and to some extent 

 from the Hippocratic writings themselves. But the wiser and 

 more sober among the writers of the Hippocratic corpus were 

 bent on something other than the causes of things. Their 

 pre-occupation was primarily with the suffering patient, and the 

 best of them therefore excluded and we may assume con- 

 sciously all but the rarest references to such speculation. 



The general state of health of the body was considered by 

 the Hippocratists to depend on the distribution of the four 

 elements, earth, air, fire, and water, whose mixture (crasis] and 

 cardinal properties, dryness, warmth, coldness, and moistness, 

 form the body and its constituents. To these correspond the 

 cardinal fluids, blood, phlegm, yellow bile and back bile. The 

 fundamental condition of life is the innate beat, the abdication 

 of which is death. This innate heat is greatest in youth when 

 most fuel is therefore required, but gradually declines with age. 

 Another necessity for the support of life is the pneuma which 

 circulates in the vessels. All this may seem fanciful enough, but 

 we may remember that the first half of the nineteenth century 



