HEIDEL. — IIcpl 4>uo-€ws. ' 119 



else they choose, reducing the causes of human diseases and death to a 

 minimum, one and the same for all, basing their argument on one or 

 two ; but in many of the novelties they utter they are clearly in the 

 wrong. This is the more blameworthy, because they err touching an 

 actual art which all men employ in the greatest emergencies and in 

 which they honor most the skillful practitioners. Now there are prac- 

 titioners, some bad, some excellent ; which would not be true if medi- 

 cine were not actually an art, and no observations or discoveries had 

 been made in it. All would be equally unskilled and ignorant of it, 

 and the cure of diseases would be wholly subject to chance. As a matter 

 of fact, it is not so ; but, as artisans in all other arts excel one the other 

 in handicraft and knowledge, so also in medicine. Therefore I main- 

 tained that it had no need of vain hypotheses, as is the case in matters 

 inaccessible to sense and open to doubt. Concerning these, if one es- 

 say to speak, one must resort to hypothesis. If, for example, one should 

 speak and entertain an opinion touching things in the heavens or under 

 the earth, it would be clear neither to the speaker nor to those who 

 heard him whether his opinion was true or false ; for there is no appeal 

 to aught that can establish the truth." While the resort to hypothesis 

 in medicine is here denounced there are instances of such use in the 

 works of Hippocrates, notably in Ilept <£uow. 159 



One more passage 160 relating to philosophy we may properly quote 

 here. " Whoso is wont to hear men speak concerning the human con- 

 stitution beyond the range of its bearing upon medicine, will find the 

 following discourse unprofitable ; for I do not say that man is wholly 

 air, nor fire, nor water, nor earth, nor any thing else that is not clearly 

 present in man. This I leave for whoso wills to say. Yet I think that 

 those who say this are in error ; for they agree in point of view, but 

 not in statement. Nevertheless the argument in support of their 

 point of view is the same ; for they say that all that exists is one. This 

 is the One and All ; but they give it different names. One calls the 

 One and All air ; another, fire ; a third, water ; still another, earth. And 

 each supports his argument with proof and evidence, which amounts to 

 nothing. For, seeing that they are all of one mind, but say, one man 

 this thing, another that, it is clear that they have no knowledge of the 



159 Littre 6, 90 foil. The treatise is a Sophistic exercise, intended to prove that 

 air, particularly the air in the body, is the cause of all diseases, and employs hypoth- 

 esis avowedly. Cp. c. 15 (p. 114 Littre). The treatises II. <pvaio$ dvOpdiwov and 

 II. dpxat7/s IriTpiKyjs aim their polemic at such exercises, as Littre justly observes, 

 6, 88. 



160 II. <pvaios av&puirov, 1 (6, 32 foil. Littre'). Littre', 6, 88, thinks the author of 

 this treatise had definitely in mind, among others, the essay II. <f>v<TQv. 



