

RELATIONS OF MEDICINE AND SURGERY 193 



nineteenth. From amputation of the larger limbs he flinched, as did 

 most if not all responsible surgeons down to Pare; for inner anatomy 

 was ill-known, and ligature, even in wounds, made slow way, indeed, 

 before Celsus, seems to have been unknown. Caries was not defin- 

 itely distinguished from necrosis, but a case of disease of the palate 

 with fallen nose irresistibly suggests syphilis. Of eye diseases we find 

 much of interest; of obstetrical practice I must be content to say 

 that it had reached a high standard; and to state once for all that 

 when surgery flourishes obstetrics flourish. 



It is by comparison of one part of the Hippocratic Canon with 

 another that we learn how a strong grasp of inner medicine was 

 attained by way of intense devotion to its inductive or surgical side. 

 And this not by a mere empiricism; for it may have been from 

 Hippocrates that Aristotle learned how by empiricism (l^irupia) we 

 perceive a certain remedy to be good for this person or for that - 

 for Socrates, let us say, or for Callias - - when he has a certain fever; 

 but that by reason we discern the characteristic common to all these 

 particular persons, wherein they react alike. In his Book of Pre- 

 cepts Hippocrates tells us that rpifir) /xera Aoyou is the basis of all 

 medical knowledge. Now rpiftrj is primarily a grinding or rubbing; 

 so the student must rub and grind at nature, using his reason at the 

 same time; but his reason must be a perceptive and interpretative 

 not a productive faculty, for he who lends himself to plausible ratio- 

 cination (Aoytoyxw TriOavw 7rpo(re^o)v) will find himself ere long in a 

 blind alley; and those who have pursued this course have done no 

 enduring service to medicine. How soundly, for the time, this lesson 

 was learned we see in the theoretical appreciation of these several 

 faculties in the first chapter of Aristotle's Metaphysics and in the 

 Sixth Book of the Ethics, where the senses, it is urged, cannot really 

 be separated from the mind, for the senses and the mind contribute 

 each an element to every knowledge. I am disposed to suggest that 

 this method of observation, experience, and judgment was estab- 

 lished first in medicine, because medicine is both practical and 

 imperative; and, as Aristotle points out, concerned with the indi- 

 vidual patient: to our art, then, may belong the honor of the appli- 

 cation of positive methods to other sciences. 



The chief lesson of the Hippocratic period for us is that, in practice 

 as in honor, medicine and surgery were then one; the Greek phy- 

 sician had no more scruple in using his hands in the service of his 

 brains than had Pheidias or Archimedes; and it was by this coopera- 

 tion in the fifth century that the advance was achieved which in our 

 eyes is marvelous. As we pursue the history of medicine in later 

 times we shall see the error, the blindness, and the vanity of physi- 

 cians who neglected and despised a noble handicraft. The clear eyes 

 of the ancient Greeks perceived that an art is not liberal or illiberal 



