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HIPPOCRENE 



HIPPOLYTUS 



His works were quoted by Plato, who compared 

 him to Polycletus and Phidias, and by Aristotle, 

 who called him 'the great.' Various stories are 

 recorded of him by Greek writers, to which, being 

 undoubtedly fabulous, it is unnecessary to advert ; 

 and we find legends regarding him in the works of 

 Arabic writers, who term him 'Bokrat,' while the 

 European story-tellers of the middle ages celebrate 

 him under the name of ' Ypocras,' and, in defiance 

 of chronology, make him professor of medicine at 

 Rome, with a nephew of wondrous medical skill, 

 whom he despatched in his own stead to the king 

 of Hungary. 



The works bearing the name of Hippocrates, and 

 termed the Hippocratic Collection, are more than 

 sixty in number, and were divided by Dr Green- 

 hill into eight classes. The first class comprises 

 works certainly written by Hippocrates, including 

 Prognostica ; Aphorismi ; De Morbis Popularibus ; 

 De Ratione Victus in Morbis Acutis ; De Acre, 

 Aquis, et Locis ; and De Capitis Vulneribus. Some 

 eminent critics doubt the genuineness of some por- 

 tions of the Aphorismi, the work by which Hippo- 

 crates is most popularly known. The second class is 

 composed of works perhaps written by Hippocrates. 

 They are eleven in number, and one of them is the 

 well-known Jusjurandum, or ' Hippocratic Oath.' 

 The others consist of works written before Hippo- 

 crates, works whose author is conjectured, works 

 by quite unknown authors, wilful forgeries, &c. 



' For anything like a full account of his views we 

 must refer to the various writers who have treated 

 of the history of medicine. We can here only 

 mention that he divides the causes of disease into 

 two principal classes : the first consisting of the 

 influence of seasons, climates, water, situation, &c. ; 

 and the second of more personal causes, such as 

 the food and exercise of the individual patient. 

 To the influence which different climates exert on 

 the human constitution he confidently ascribes 

 both the conformation of the body and the dis- 

 position of the mind, and hence accounts for the 

 differences between the Greek and the less hardy 

 Asiatic. The four fluids or humours of the body 

 (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile) were 

 regarded by him as the primary seats of disease ; 

 health was the result of the due combination (or 

 crasis ) of these, the disturbance of which produced 

 illness. When a disease was proceeding favour- 

 ably these humours underwent a certain change 

 (or coction), which was the sign of returning health, 

 as preparing for the expulsion of morbid matter, or 

 crisis, these crises having a tendency to occur at 

 definite periods, which were thence called ' critical 

 days. ' His treatment of diseases was cautious, and 

 what we now term expectant ; it consisted chiefly 

 and often solely in attention to diet and regimen ; 

 and he was sometimes reproached with letting his 

 patients die by doing nothing to keep them alive. 



The works of Hippocrates were translated at 

 an early period into Arabic. They were first 

 printed in a Latin translation in 1525 at Rome. 

 The first Greek edition ( the Aldine ) appeared the 

 following year at Venice ; an edition by Mercuriali 

 appeared in 1588, one by Foes in 1595, and one by 

 Van der Linden in 1665. Others have appeared 

 under the editorship of Chartier, Kiihn, &c. The 

 best edition, with an admirable French translation, 

 is that of Littre (10 vols. 1839-61). A scholarly 

 edition by Ermerius, with a Latin rendering, was 

 published in 1859-65 at Utrecht, at the expense of 

 the university of Amsterdam. An excellent Eng- 

 lish translation of the Genuine Works of Hippo- 

 crates was published in 1849, in 2 vols., by Dr 

 Adams of Banchory, Aberdeenshire. 



Hippocrene (derived from hippos, 'a horse,' 

 and krene, ' a fountain ' ), a fountain on the northern 

 slope of Mount Helicon, in Greece, sacred to the 



Muses and Apollo, which, according to the mythical 

 account, was produced by a stroke from the hoof of 

 the horse Pegasus (q.v. ). It is identified with a 

 spring at the modern Makariotissa. 



Hippodami'a* the beautiful daughter of OZno- 

 ,.iaus, king of Pisa, in Elis. It had been predicted 

 to her father that he should be slain by his future 

 son-in-law ; he therefore stipulated that every 

 suitor of his daughter should run a chariot-race 

 with him, and that death should be the consequence 

 of^ defeat. At length Pelops bribed the king's 

 charioteer, and thus succeeded in reaching the goal 

 before (Enomaus, who, in despair, killed himself. 

 Hippodamia became by Pelops the mother of Atreus 

 and Thyestes. 



Hippodrome (Gr. hippos, 'a horse,' and 

 dromos, 'a racecourse'), the Greek name for the 

 place set apart for horse and chariot races. Its 

 dimensions were, according to the common opinion, 

 half a mile in length, and one-eighth of a mile in 

 breadth. In construction and all the most impor- 

 tant points of arrangement it was the counterpart of 

 the Roman Circus (see CIRCUS). See also OLYMPIC 

 GAMES (under Olympia) and CONSTANTINOPLE. 



Hippogriff, or HIPPOGRYPH (Gr. hippos, 'a 

 horse, and the word gryph, ' griffin ' ), a fabulous 

 animal, unknown to the ancients, which is repre- 

 sented by modern writers as a winged horse with 

 the head of a griffin. The hippogriff figures as the 

 horse of the Muses, and plays a conspicuous role 

 in the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto. 



HippolytllS, a Christian writer who enjoyed 

 great celebrity in the first half of the 3d century, 

 but of whose personal history we know but little 

 with certainty. He was born most likely about 

 155-160 A.D., and died about 235 or 236. The first 

 to mention him is Eusebius, who says he was a 

 bishop somewhere, and some writers have placed 

 his diocese in Arabia, while almost all the eastern 

 writers style him Bishop of Rome. He is usually 

 described by modern writers as Bishop of Portus, 

 near Rome, but for this title there is no evidence 

 earlier than the middle of the 7th century. He 

 may have been a native of the East, and he is said 

 to have been a disciple of Irenaeus ; but this may 

 have been either in Asia Minor, in Gaul, or in 

 Rome itself, which Eusebius tells us that Irenreus 

 visited about 178. An entry in the Liberian Cata- 

 logue of bishops of Rome tells that Pontianus 

 the bishop and Hippolytus the presbyter were 

 transported as exiles to the mines of Sardinia, 

 where ere long they perished, their bodies being 

 carried back to Rome. Pruderitius (5th century) 

 gives a different but much less credible account 

 of the martyrdom of Hippolytus, according to 

 which he was torn in pieces by wild horses like 

 the Hippolytus of mythology. He tells us that he 

 was infected with the Novatian heresy, but recanted 

 on the way to martyrdom. Such was the un- 

 satisfactory state of knowledge when the recovery 

 at Mount Athos by Minoides Mynas in 1842 of the 

 treatise against heresies cast fresh light upon 

 Hippolytus as its presumptive author. It was 

 contained in a 14th-century MS., and when pub- 

 lished by Miller in 1851 was recognised as forming 

 part of the fragment ascribed to Origen and entitled 

 the Philosophumena. Its appearance opened up a 

 grave discussion. The Origenistic authorship was 

 soon abandoned, and attempts were made by Baur 

 to ascribe it to Gains, by De Rossi to Tertullian, 

 by Armellini to Novatian. Jacobi advanced the 

 claims of Hippolytus, and this theory was sup- 

 ported by Bunsen and Wordsworth, and so conclu- 

 sively proved by Dollinger as to persuade almost 

 every scholar save Lipsius, who still continued to 

 describe the author as Pseudo-Origenes. 

 From the treatise itself we learn that the author 



