Greek Medicine 105 



the patient, the use and abuse of splints, and the need for 

 tidiness, order, and cleanliness. Many of these directions are 

 enlarged upon in other surgical works of the collection, among 

 which we find especially full instructions for bandaging and 

 for the diagnosis and treatment of fractures and dislocations. 

 A very fair representation of such a surgery as these works 

 describe is to be found on a vase-painting of Ionic origin which 

 is of the fifth century and therefore about contemporary with 

 Hippocrates himself (see fig. 5). There are also several beautiful 

 representations on vases of the actual processes of bandaging 

 (fig. 6). 



Among the surgical procedures of which descriptions are 

 to be found in the Hippocratic writings are the opening of 

 the chest for the condition known as empyema (accumulation 

 of pus within the pleura frequently following pneumonia), 

 and trephining the skull in cases of fracture of that part two 

 fundamental operations of modern surgery. Surgical art has 

 advanced enormously in our own times, yet a text-book con- 

 taining much that is useful to this day might be prepared from 

 these surgical contents of the collection alone. 



When we pass to the works on Medicine, in the restricted 

 sense, w r e enter into a region more difficult and perhaps even 

 more fascinating. We are no longer dealing with simple lesions 

 of known origin, but with the effects of disease and degenera- 

 tion, of the essential character of which the Hippocratic writers 

 could in the nature of the case know very little. Rigidly guard- 

 ing themselves from any attempt to explain disease by more 

 immediate and hypothetical causes and thus diverting the 

 reader's energies in the medically useless direction of vague 

 speculation the prevalent mental vice of the Greeks the 

 best of these physicians are content if they can put forward 

 generalized conclusions from actually observed cases. Many 

 of their thoughts have now become household words, 

 and they have become so, largely as a direct heritage from 



