82 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



ill medicine to signify an unhealthy habit of body. Hippo- 

 crates speaks of remedies which act on particular humours- 

 some on bile, others on phlegm or mucus. Even in our own 

 day we have our cholagogues and hydragogues — terms which 

 have been handed down from these teachings. He attributes 

 most fevers to bile. The humours were supposed to be at first 

 crude, then they underwent digestion — or coction, as it w^as 

 called — and the diseased fluids were expelled by a crisis. It 

 W'as a beginning of what is known as the humoral pathology, 

 which has influenced medicine up to our own times. This 

 theory of pathology is, indeed, still in favour at certain hydro- 

 pathic establishments. Prolonged wet-packing, by interfering 

 with the normal functions of the skin, produces an artificial 

 eczema, and when the watery or purulent rash appears the 

 patient is informed that it is a " crisis," by which the bad 

 humours of the blood are escaping. It is worthy of note that 

 Hippocrates attributed the first cause of diseases to the air 

 (-TTFeS/Att, spiritus). Air was believed by ancient philosophers to 

 contain the vital principle (sjiiritus vitalis), from which it was 

 to be inferred that diseases were caused by some abnormal 

 spiritus in the air, although Hippocrates admits that some 

 diseases may be produced by errors of diet. 



Great influence in the causation of disease was attributed by 

 Hippocrates and his successors to the time of the year, sum- 

 mer and autumn being the seasons when fevers were in the 

 ascendant. The constitution of the atmosphere was held to 

 determine in some degree the constitution of the reigning 

 diseases. The observation was perfectly correct, although the 

 manner in which atmospheric conditions influence disease 

 could not be then understood — nor do I by any means assert 

 that they are yet fully understood. To this I will refer later, 

 when speaking of epidemics. 



It might be of great interest to trace the slow steps of the 

 growth of medical knowledge, but this would lead us away 

 from our subject without conferring any present benefit. 



Medicine had its dark ages. Its practice became strangely 

 mixed up with astrology, incantations, invocations, and charms. 

 Here and there was a spark of light from some original 

 thinker, whose means of research were, however, insufiicient 

 to enable him to place his views on any sound basis. Theories 

 reigned in place of facts, and medicine had to await the de- 

 velopment of auxiliary and sister sciences before she could 

 even distantly hope to attain the position which I believe 

 she is now rapidly acquiring — namely, that of an exact science. 



But a word about the later theories. The chemical theory of 

 disease prevailed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with 

 which the name of the clever, egotistic, semi-scientific charla- 

 tan, Paracelsus, is associated. Its supporters referred pro- 



