40 On Popular Illufwns. 



Galen followed Hippocrates in afcribing all 

 difeafes to natural caufes, and Avicenna Galen. 

 An expreffion in Hlppocrates's Prognoftics, 

 however, puzzled them a little, and was long 

 urged by demonologitls, who always think them- 

 felves at liberty to reprefent fadls and opinions 

 in the. way moft favourable to themfelves. Thus 

 Quinctius's collection of dreams, apparitions 

 and prophecies retailed in Cicero's firft book of 

 .Divination, is quoted largely by thofe writers, 

 without any notice of the refutation produced 

 in the fecond, Hippocxates has faid that a phy- 

 lician ought to diftinguifh what is divine (n ^sm) 

 in difeafes. As this apparently contradids the 

 fentiments delivered in his Treatife de Morbo 

 Sacro, Galen, in his Commentary on the paJTage, 

 fuppofes that the phrafe is a grsecifm, though 

 it appears to have been generally underftood in 

 the literal fenfej he explains it to fignify, that 

 a phyfician fliould fludy the nature of the at- 

 mofphere, from which fo many difeafes v/ere 

 fuppofed to proceed. Aretasus fupplies an ufe- 

 ful criticifm on the word 'ispov as applied to epi- 

 lepfy, which' ftrengthens Galen's fuppofition. 

 The difeafe is thus termed, according to him, 

 on account of its feverity, becaufe i£fov and j«£7« 

 were fynonimous with the Greeks. Among the 

 modern commentators on Hippocrates, Horftius 

 has the ingenuity to reconcile his opinion, and 

 that of Galen, with his own. He allows that 



Hippocrates 



