PREFACE 



we gain a useful point of view from which to 

 consider the pregnant thoughts and researches 

 of the Greeks regarding the nature of animals 

 and plants, and their wise practice of the heal- 

 ing art. We may profit by the spirit in 

 which they made their investigations and 

 applied a system of therapeutics, scientifically 

 based. 



Our correlated modern sciences which are 

 called biological because they treat of living 

 organisms, have pushed their researches and 

 discoveries far beyond the achievements of the 

 Greeks. They are not a graft upon a Greek 

 stem: they have arisen through the direct 

 study of nature, not from the old Greek books. 

 Thus they have shown a Greek spirit. It is in 

 this modern renewal of a scientific mind, rather 

 than in any specific borrowings from the 

 ancient stock, that we should seek to recognize 

 what Greece has been and still may be for us. 



So with medicine. The reign of Galen ended 

 some centuries ago. But modern medicine, in 

 spite of its vastly increased knowledge, has 

 never ceased to hark back, and often very con- 

 sciously, to the principles of Hippocrates. 

 With a larger knowledge than his own, it 

 rightly reverences the great Greek, and treads 



[xiv] 



