HIPPOCRATES. 



OWING to the lapse of centuries, very little is known 

 with certainty of the life of Hippocrates, who was called 

 with affectionate veneration by his successors "the 

 divine old man," and who has been justly known to 

 posterity as " the Father of Medicine." 



He was probably born about 470 B.C., and, according 

 to all accounts, appears to have reached the advanced 

 age of ninety years or more. He must, therefore, have 

 lived during a period of Greek history which was cha- 

 racterized by great intellectual activity; for he had, as 

 his contemporaries, Pericles the famous statesman ; the 

 poets ^Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, 

 and Pindar ; the philosopher Socrates, with his disciples 

 Xenophon and Plato; the historians Herodotus and 

 Thucydides ; and Phidias the unrivalled sculptor. 



In the island of Cos, where he was born, stood one of 

 the most celebrated of the temples of ^Esculapius, and 

 in this temple because he was descended from the 

 Asclepiadse Hippocrates inherited from his forefathers 



