io8 Greek Medicine 



experiment dangerous, and judgement difficult. Yet we 

 must be prepared not only to do our duty ourselves, but 

 also patient, attendants, and external circumstances must 

 co-operate.' 1 



In this one memorable paragraph, so condensed in the 

 original as to be almost untranslatable, he who * first separated 

 medicine from philosophy ' puts aside at once all speculative 

 interest while in the actual presence of the sick. His whole 

 energy is concentrated on the case in hand with that peculiar 

 attitude, at once impersonal and intensely personal, that has 

 since been the mark of the physician, and that has made of 

 Medicine both a science and an art. 



' For extreme diseases, extreme methods of cure.' 2 



' The aged endure fasting most easily ; next adults ; next 

 young persons, and least of all children, and especially such as 

 are the most lively.' 



( Growing bodies have the most innate heat ; they therefore 

 require the most nourishment, and if they have it not they 

 waste. In the aged there is little heat, and therefore they 

 require little fuel, for it would be extinguished by much. 

 Similarly fevers in the aged are not so acute, because their 

 bodies are cold.' 



' In disease sleep that is laborious is a deadly symptom ; but 

 if sleep relieves it is not deadly.' 



4 Sleep that puts an end to delirium is a good symptom.' 



' If a convalescent eats well, but does not put on flesh, it is 

 a bad symptom.' 



' Food or drink which is a little less good but more palatable, 

 is to be preferred to such that is better but less palatable.' 



1 The first lines are the source of the famous lines in Goethe's Faust : 



' Ach Gott ! die Kunst ist lang 

 Und kurz ist unser Leben, 

 Mir wird bei meinem kritischen Bestreben 

 Doch oft um Kopf und Busen bang.' 



2 The extreme of treatment refers in the original to the extreme restriction 

 of diet, fs ctKpifieujv, but the meaning of the Aphorism has always been taken 

 as more generalized. 



