104 Greek Medicine 



to pass very definitely beyond the Hippocratic position. 

 Admirable, too, is the Hippocratic description of disloca- 

 tion of the shoulder and of the jaw. In dislocation of hip, 

 shoulder, or jaw, as in most similar lesions, there is considerable 

 deformity produced. The nature and meaning of this deformity 

 is described with remarkable exactness by the Hippocratic 

 writer, who also sets forth the resulting disability. The 

 principles and indeed the very details of treatment in these 

 cases are, save for the use of an anaesthetic, practically identical 

 with those of the present day. The processes are unfortunately 

 not suitable for detailed quotation and description here, but 

 they are of special interest since a graphic record of them has 

 come down to us. There exists in the Laurentian Library at 

 Florence a ninth-century Greek surgical manuscript which 

 contains figures of surgeons reducing the dislocations in 

 question. There is good reason to suppose that these miniatures 

 are copied from figures first prepared in pre-Christian times 

 many centuries earlier, and we may here see the actual processes 

 of reduction of such fractures, as conducted by a surgeon of 

 the direct Hippocratic tradition l (see Figs. 3, 4). 



In keeping with all this is most of the surgical work of the 

 collection. We are almost startled by the modern sound of the 

 whole procedure as we run through the rough note-book 

 KCIT' tr/rpeior, Concerning the Surgery, or the more elaborate 

 treatise Trept ujrpou, On the Physician, where we may read 

 minute directions for the preparation of the operating-room, 

 and on such points as the management of light both artificial 

 and natural, scrupulous cleanliness of the hands, the care and 

 use of the instruments, with the special precautions needed 

 when they are of iron, the decencies to be observed during the 

 operation, the general method of bandaging, the placing of 



1 This famous manuscript is known as Laurentian, Plutarch 74, 7, and 

 its figures have been reproduced by H. Schone, Apollonius von Kitium, 

 Leipzig, 1896. 



