128 Greek Medicine 



scientific method, a degree of fury which was only rivalled by 

 that of some of the humanists themselves towards the trans- 

 lators from the Arabic. But these are now dead fires. As the 

 clinical and scientific methods of teaching gained ground, 

 textual studies receded in medical education, as Hippocrates 

 and Galen themselves would have wished them to recede. 



The texts of Hippocrates and Galen have now ceased to 

 occupy a place in any medical curriculum. Yet all who know 

 these writings, know too, not only that their spirit is still with 

 us, but that the works themselves form the background of 

 modern practice, and that their very phraseology is still in use 

 at the bedside. Modern medicine may be truly described as 

 in essence a creation of the Greeks. To realize the nature of 

 our medical system, some knowledge of its Greek sources is 

 essential. It would indeed be a bad day for medicine if ever this 

 debt to the Greeks were forgotten, and the loss would be at 

 least as much ethical as intellectual. But there is happily no 

 fear of this, for the figure and spirit of Hippocrates are more 

 real and living to-day than they have been, since the great 

 collapse of the Greek scientific intellect in the third and fourth 

 centuries of the Christian era. 



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