374 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1946 
Thucydides, Phidias, Sophocles, and Euripides, was Hippocrates. 
He was undoubtedly the most important and most complete medical 
personality of antiquity (2). He was born about 460 B. C. on the 
small island of Cos. 
Objective observation was the feature of the Hippocratic school. 
It has been stated that the 47 clinical histories contained in the Hip- 
pocratic writings are the only ones worthy of the name to be found 
in medical literature for the next 1700 years (3). The honesty and 
sincerity of Hippocrates is illustrated by his citing the fact that 60 
percent of his cases ended fatally. In his own words, he believed 
it “valuable to learn of unsuccessful experiments and to know the 
cause of their failure.” He made no attempt to magnify his own 
importance by hiding his own lack of knowledge or failures. The 
“Oath of Hippocrates,” now familiar even to some lay persons, 
expressed the high ethical level to which medicine rose in the Golden 
Age of Greece. 
The inspiring period of Hippocrates was followed by an astound- 
ingly long period of stagnation and decadence, interrupted only by 
rare and relatively minor contributions. One of the few outstanding 
figures was Galen (A. D. 131-201), physician to the Emperor Marcus 
Aurelius. To Galen are attributed wide and original discoveries in 
anatomy, physiology, and disease in general as well as in the use of 
various drugs. But this was a very different manner of man, who 
was equipped with the highest opinion of his own value and was sure 
of his own infallibility. He constructed an extensive edifice of dogma. 
With pestilences mysticism returned. ‘The viewpoint which made 
disease the punishment for sin was no stimulus to the search for the 
causes of disease. For centuries none disputed the oracular pronounce- 
ments of the past even though illustrious physicians appeared from 
time to time. The Persian philosopher, Avicenna, was the most re- 
nowned of the Golden Age of Arabian medicine in the tenth century. 
His famous Canon (Q’anun) followed the ideas of Hippocrates, Galen, 
and Aristotle and constituted a statement of authoritative scholastic 
dogmatism. 
MEDICINE AND THE RENAISSANCE 
The reawakening of a critical spirit, the rebellion against author- 
ity, the promulgation of the system of Copernicus, the discovery 
of America, and events of similar magnitude during the Renaissance 
were accompanied in the field of medicine by a violent revolution 
against the authority of the ancients. The beginning of the modern 
experimental period may be said to date from Paracelsus, a strange 
combination of sorcerer, philosopher, alchemist, and physician of this 
time. The keynote of the teaching of Paracelsus was that men 
should search into the workings of nature for themselves. He startled 
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