Greek Medicine 85 



scholars at the order of the book-loving Ptolemy Soter (reigned 

 323-285 B. c.). The elements of which this collection is com- 

 posed are of varying dates from the sixth to the fourth century 

 B. c., and of varying value and origin, but they mainly represent 

 the point of view of physicians of the eastern part of the Greek 

 world in the fifth and fourth centuries. 



The most obvious feature, the outstanding element that at 

 once strikes the modern observer in these ' Coan ' writings, is 

 the enormous emphasis laid on the actual course of disease. 

 ' It appears to me a most excellent thing ', so opens one of the 

 greatest of the Hippocratic works, * for a physician to cultivate 

 pronoia. 1 Foreknowing and foretelling in the presence of the 

 sick the past, present, and future (of their symptoms) and 

 explaining all that the patients are neglecting, he would be 

 believed to understand their condition, so that men would 

 have confidence to entrust themselves to his care. . . . Thus 

 he would win just respect and be a good physician. By an 

 earlier forecast in each case he would be more able to tend 

 those aright who have a chance of surviving, and by foreseeing 

 and stating who will die, and who will survive, he will escape 

 blame . . . ' 2 



Just as the Cnidians by dividing up diseases according to 

 symptoms over-emphasized diagnosis and over-elaborated 

 treatment, so the Coans laid very great force on prognosis and 

 adopted therefore a largely expectant attitude towards diseases. 

 Both Cnidian and Coan physicians were held together by 



1 This word pronoia, as Galen explains (els To'l-mroKpaTOvs TTpoyvuxTTiKuv, 

 K. xviii, B. p. 10), is not used in the philosophic sense, as when we ask 

 whether the universe was made by chance or by pronoia, nor is it used 

 quite in the modern sense of prognosis, though it includes that too. Pronoia 

 in Hippocrates means knowing things about a patient before you are told 

 them. See E. T. Withington, ' Some Greek medical terms with reference to 

 Luke and Liddell and Scott,' Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 

 (Section of the History of Medicine), xiii, p. 124, London, 1920. 



2 Prognostics I. 



