THE HIPPOCRATICS 



of medicine to trace the true causes, as well 

 as the probable course, of a disease; and so 

 learn to prevent or, if not that, to control and 

 cure. Outside of Greece, as in Egypt or Baby- 

 lonia, physicians could not cease to be priests 

 or astrologers. There was surgery and some 

 medicine practiced in those lands; but the 

 practice could not quite disregard supposed 

 demoniacal causes of disease or detach itself 

 from the panacea of magic. These supersti- 

 tions were stumbling blocks before the advance 

 of medicine as a science or an art, progressing 

 through knowledge and skill drawn from ob- 

 servation and experience. Their complete elim-. 

 ination first comes before us in the Hippo-! 

 cratic writings. It was part of the Greek 

 freeing of the human spirit from foolish 

 anxieties and irrelevant considerations; a put- 

 ting things in their right places, — their right 

 categories, human and divine, natural and 

 supernatural, if the latter existed at all. In- 

 deed the superhuman and divine might be just 

 the other side, another aspect of the human 

 and material, — just as much part of the uni- 

 versal order and just as subject to law. 



The classic Hippocratic argument for this 

 principle is in the tract On the Sacred Disease, 



[23] 



