HING-CHING HIPPOCRENE. 



747 



respected, were reduced to the city of Delhi and its 

 territory. The last Mogul emperor received a pen- 

 sion from the English, who (1803) took possession of 

 Delhi and Agra. 



HING-CHING (Chinese, meaning representation 

 of sound). The Chinese alphabet is composed of 

 ideographic and phonetic signs ; these phonetic 

 signs are all syllabic; they are called by the Chinese 

 hing-ching, of which, according to Abel Remusat's 

 Chinese Grammar, p. 4, half of the alphabet consists. 

 The Chinese have also a sign by which they cau 

 render ideographic signs phonetic, which, for 

 instance, becomes necessary, when they wish to 

 write foreign proper nouns, and have no sounds 

 among their phonetic characters which express the 

 foreign sound. See Hieroglyphics. 



HIPPARCHUS. See Hippias. 



HIPPIAS ; prince of Athens, son of the great Pisi- 

 stratus, after whose death he assumed the govern- 

 ment, in conjunction with his brother Hipparchus : 

 the latter was assassinated during the Panathenaea, 

 while conducting a solemn procession to the temple 

 of Minerva, by a band of conspirators, under two 

 young Greeks, Harmodius and Aristogiton. Hip- 

 pias now seized the reins of the government alone, 

 and revenged the death of his brother by imposing 

 taxes on the people, selling offices, and puttin g to 

 death all of whom he entertained the least suspicion, 

 after having forced them to confess by the most 

 dreadful tortures. This fate fell even upon several of 

 his best friends, whom Aristogiton, full of indignation, 

 had falsely accused as the conspirators. The Athen- 

 ians, wearied with these cruelties, formed a plan to free 

 themselves from the yoke. They found means to 

 bribe the priests of the Delphic oracle, which com- 

 manded the Spartans to release the Athenians from 

 the tyranny of the Pisistratides. In compliance with 

 the command of the divine Pythia, Sparta broke off 

 her alliance with the tyrant of Athens, who was 

 obliged to yield to the united attack of his foreign 

 and domestic enemies. Hippias was expelled from 

 the city B. C. 510, and Athens breathed more freely. 

 But the means by which the voice of the oracle had 

 been gained, did not remain a secret, and the Spar- 

 tans, filled with indignation, demanded the restoration 

 of Hippias, but without success. Hippias now 

 sought protection and support from Artaphernes, the 

 satrap of Sardis, and induced Darius, who was already 

 irritated against the Athenians, on account of the 

 assistance which they had rendered to the Asiatic 

 Greeks, to require them to receive Hippias. Their 

 decisive refusal kindled the first war of the Persians 

 against the European Greeks. But the battle of 

 Marathon, in 490, destroyed, with the army of Darius, 

 the hopes of Hippias ; he himself fell on that bloody 

 day, fighting against his country. 



Hippias was also the name of a sophist. 



Hll'POCENTAURS, in mythology ; a species of 

 monsters, sprung from the union of a Centaur and 

 mare. From the derivation of the word, it is highly 

 probable that it denotes a rider who spears an ox 

 from on horseback, for this term is compounded of 

 the words iVa-a?, XMTHV, racuoos. 



HIPPOCRATES, the most famous among the 

 Greek physicians, founder of a school in medicine, 

 and author of the first attempt at a scientific 

 treatment of medicine, was born in the island of Cos, 

 and in the city of the same name, B. C. 456, and be- 

 longed to the celebrated family of Asclepiades, or 

 descendants of ^Esculapius, from whom Hippocrates 

 was the seventeenth in descent. His father, Hera- 

 elides, a physician, instructed him in the art of phy- 

 sic, and his education was conducted with all the 

 care that was usual in the principal families, during 

 the flourishing period of Greece. He probably en- 



joyed the instruction of the philosophers then living 

 at Athens, and, among them, of Heraclitus. He 

 spent the greater part of his life in visiting the dif- 

 ferent cities of Greece, for the purpose of improving 

 in his art. He remained longest in Thrace nna 

 Thessaly, particularly in the Thracian island Thasus, 

 and probably travelled also over a great part of 

 Asia. He died in his ninetieth year. 



The writings which are extant under the name of 

 Hippocrates cannot all be ascribed to him. There 

 were several of the name. Some of these 

 writings are the productions of the Alexandrian 

 school. Others, though genuine, have been collect- 

 ed, altered, explained, ana mixed with additions, by 

 his descendants. The genuine writings of Hippo- 

 crates are, the first and third book on epidemics ; 

 aphorisms ; the treatise on diet ; on air, waters, and 

 situations ; on prognostics ; some surgical treatises ; 

 the oath ; the law. The most esteemed edition is 

 that of Geneva, of 1657, in 2 vols. folio. Besides 

 this, we may mention that by Van der Linden (Ley- 

 den, 1665, 2 vols.), and that by Chartier (Paris, 1639 

 79, 13 vols., folio, together with Galen). The 

 latest is by Kuhn (vol. 1st., Leipsic, 1825). Hippo- 

 crates was a zealous, unwearied observer of nature, 

 and considered diseases with a free spirit, unpreju- 

 diced by any system ; hence we have from him the 

 finest description of their natural course, disturbed 

 neither by medicines nor by any violent or precipi- 

 tate interference. He was by this means best en- 

 abled to become acquainted with the healing power 

 of nature, and with the different ways in which she 

 effects the restoration of the sick, as well as with 

 the exterior means by which she was supported in 

 her operations. He adopted a principle of life as a 

 fundamental power of the living body (Enormon) on 

 which life, health or sickness were dependent ; but 

 he did not express himself more distinctly respecting 

 it ; nor did he enter into many hypotheses and investi- 

 gations on the nature of disease in general. He 

 paid great attention to the exterior influences, as the 

 remoter causes of the maladies ; in particular to air, 

 food, climate, dwelling-place, and even to the social 

 relations of the sick. He made the observation, that 

 nature followed, in the course of the diseases, cer- 

 tain periods of increase and diminution, and was led 

 by this to his doctrine of the critical days. In his 

 method of curing, the dietetical precepts take the 

 first rank. He advises to adapt the diet to the de- 

 gree of strength of the sick. At the same time, he 

 makes it his object to observe the operations of 

 nature, to lead them, to imitate them, and', as cir- 

 cumstances require, to augment or to repress them. 

 During the increase of the disease, he did not willing- 

 ly undertake any thing decisive, lest nature might be 

 disturbed in her wholesome operation on the matter 

 of disease ; but, during the crisis of secretion and 

 evacuation of the matter of disease, or shortly before, 

 he assisted nature by means which promoted the dis- 

 charges. His peculiar merit in medicine consisted 

 chiefly in clearing this science from the useless sub- 

 tilties of the many philosophical sects of that period, 

 and in making it, instead of the exclusive property 

 of the priests, a common good, open to every one 

 who wished to study it ; in observing the course of 

 undisturbed nature with a clear eye and an enlightened 

 mind, and in the faithful communication of his expe- 

 rience. He directed the attention of physicians to the 

 importance of exterior influences, to the healing powers 

 of nature, and to the necessity of an appropriate 

 diet ; and enriched the doctrine of the symptoms, 

 and of the prognostics in diseases, with a number 

 of observations, founded in nature, and manifesting 

 his great genius and skill as a physician. 



HIPPOCRENE (the horse's fountain); a spring on 



