ON THOUGHT IN" MEDICINE. 205 



are to understand as a philosopher. For the ancients, 

 philosophy embraced all theoretical knowledge ; their 

 philosophers pursued Mathematics, Physics, Astronomy, 

 Natural History, in close connection with true philo- 

 sophical or metaphysical considerations. If, therefore, 

 we are to understand the medical philosopher of Hip- 

 pokrates to be a man who has a perfected insight into 

 the causal connection of natural processes, we shall in 

 fact be able to say with Hippokrates, Such a one can 

 give help like a god. 



Understood in this sense, the aphorism describes 

 in three words the ideal which our science has to strive 

 after. But who can allege that it will ever attain 

 this ideal ? 



But those disciples of medicine who thought them- 

 selves divine even in their own lifetime, and who 

 wished to impose themselves upon others as such, were 

 not inclined to postpone their hopes for so long a 

 period. The requirements for the QiXocrofos were 

 considerably moderated. Every adherent of any given 

 cosmological system, in which, for well or ill, facts 

 must be made to correspond with reality, felt himself to 

 be a philosopher. The philosophers of that time knew 

 little more of the laws of Nature than the unlearned 

 layman ; but the stress of their endeavours was laid upon 

 thinking, upon the logical consequence and complete- 

 ness of the system. It is not difficult to understand 



