. 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 (f>L\6a-o^>os 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 



