THE HISTORY OF VETERINARY MEDICINE. 221 



ever, greatly honored, and both practiced and taught medicine 

 among his countrymen. He was the author of many books, but 

 few of those which have come down to us are looked upon as 

 genuine ; many others attributed to him contain much of his teach- 

 ing, however. It is a mistake to designate him as the founder of a 

 new system of medicine : he was simply a harvester in the fields of 

 medicine, but also a keen observer of the phenomena of disease. He 

 himself says that " he who scorns or throws away the past, and seeks 

 to make a new way and new theories, or thinks that he has found 

 such, is either a deceiver or is himself deceived" — words which 

 should not be without due appreciation by the ^Esculapians of the 

 present day and generation. The followers are many, the discover- 

 ers of new truths but isolated phenomena in the march of human 

 progress. 



He was a grand observer of nature. He made no new system, 

 but was bitterly opposed to hypotheses. He looked upon the living 

 organism in the Epidoclesian sense, as composed of four cardinal ele- 

 ments, which he named blood, mucus, black gall, and yellow gall. 

 His pathology was simple in the extreme. When these cardinal 

 elements bore a proper relation to each other in the living organism, 

 a crasis or normality existed ; any disturbance of this normal condi- 

 tion, any preponderance of one of these elements, either as a whole 

 or locally, produced abnormality, dyscrasis. He laid but little value 

 upon theoretic discussions : " When any one can give a better ex- 

 planation, it suits me equally well ; such ability is but the result of a 

 glib tongue." His anatomical knowledge was quite limited, and he 

 seems never to have made studies upon the human body. He laid 

 great stress upon the value of knowledge with regard to all the ex- 

 ternal phenomena presented by the diseased organism. The condi- 

 tions, in disease, of many internal organs, did not, however, escape 

 his attention — such as the swelling of the spleen, and its subsequent 

 retraction, in various forms of infectious disease. " The practitioner 

 should be able to recognize the conditions presented to him, without 

 the necessity of referring to the relations of the patient ; ... if 

 perspiration occurs in a fevered patient, without remission of the 

 fever, the disease will be lengthened ; the fever increases when 

 the teeth have a viscid coating ; . . . a disease in which sleep has a 

 deleterious influence is deadly ; when the patient is, however, im- 

 proved by sleep, it is to be looked upon as a favorable symptom ; . . . 

 sleep and sleeplessness, when present to an abnormal degree, are 

 evil symptoms ; . . . when a convalescent person has a good appe- 

 tite, but does not improve thereby, it is a bad symptom ; ... he 



