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GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE 



stood by means of the four humors, which 

 seemed to Hippocrates the nearest explanation 

 of the observed phenomena. 



Thus a certain amount of hypothesis entered 

 the Hippocratic healing art; — as it necessarily 

 makes part of every art as well as every science. 

 But Hippocrates at least economized in hy- 

 pothesis as few men after him, and very con- 

 sciously. For he was an acute Ionian Greek, 

 and the need to seek and formulate explana- 

 tions, that is, hypotheses, comes with great 

 urgency to every intelligent and inquiring mind. 

 Babylonians and Egyptians, who were prac- 

 tical, but not intellectually curious, were not 

 beset with any like cravings. And indeed the 

 history of Greek, as well as modern, medicine 

 will illustrate this competitive endeavor of the 

 intellectual mind to keep its explanations 

 abreast of observation; — indeed explanations, 

 hypotheses, in the endeavor to keep abreast, 

 to account for phenomena, save the appearances 

 (croj^etv TO, (l>aLv6fxeva, a Platonic phrase), will 

 constantly go beyond them, and so astray. All 

 progressive physical science, and medicine 

 striving ever to become a science, exhibit this 

 struggle of hypothesis to account for observa- 

 tion. And doubtless the more modest working 



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