Greek Medicine 109 



c The old have generally fewer complaints than young ; but 

 those chronic diseases which do befall them generally never 

 leave them.' 



Here we have a group of observations, some of which have 

 become literally household words, nor is it difficult to under- 

 stand how such sayings have passed from professional into lay 

 keeping. This magnificent book of Aphorisms was very early 

 translated into Latin, probably before and certainly not later 

 than the sixth century of the Christian era. and thus became 

 accessible throughout the West. Manuscripts of this Latin 

 version, dating from the ninth and tenth centuries of our era, 

 have survived in the actual places in which they were written, 

 at Monte Cassino in Southern Italy and at Einsiedeln in 

 Switzerland, and in 991 the book of Aphorisms was well known 

 and closely studied at the Cathedral school of Chartres. From 

 France the Aphorisms reached England, and they are mentioned 

 in documents of the tenth or eleventh century. By now, too, 

 the book had been translated into Syriac and later into Arabic 

 and Hebrew, so that in the true mediaeval period it was known 

 both East and West, and in the vernacular as well as the classical 

 tongues. From the oriental dialects several further translations 

 were again made into Latin. An enormous number of manu- 

 scripts of the work have survived in almost every Western dialect, 

 and these show on the whole that the text has been surprisingly 

 little tampered with. In the middle of the thirteenth century 

 some of the better-known Aphorisms were absorbed into a very 

 popular Latin poem that went forth in the name of the medical 

 school of Salerno, though with a false ascription to a yet 

 earlier date. The Salernitan poem, being itself translated 

 into every European vernacular, further helped to bring 

 Hippocrates into every home. 



But by no means all the Aphorisms are of a kind that could 

 well become absorbed into folk medicine. It is only those 

 concerning frequently recurring states to which this fate could 



