THE HIPPOCRATICS 



this great opening treatise, one will not fail to 

 admire its profound intelligence. 



So Hippocrates saw the natural causes of 

 disease in such matters as unsuitable food or 

 evil indulgence, unhealthy occupations, climate 

 and the changing seasons. He had also ob- 

 served the effect of heredity and the strength 

 of individual constitutions on their proneness 

 to disease. The office of medicine, of all medi- 

 cal treatment, was to assist the natural re- 

 cuperative powers of the patient to throw off 

 the disease. This Hippocratic idea of nature's 

 vis medicatrix was hardly an hypothesis, so 

 open to observation was the tendency of 

 wounds to heal and of sick people to recover. 



For treatment Hippocrates relied upon the 

 clinical observation of the course of acute dis- 

 ease and the significance of pathological 

 symptoms, recognized from the contrast ex- 

 hibited with the state of the body in health. 

 Symptoms had always local significance; 

 usually they indicated further physical dis- 

 turbance. Let a comprehensive and whole view 

 be taken of the case, with careful consideration 

 of every indication of the patient's condition 

 and chances of recovery. The symptoms were 

 considered generally as the phenomena of acute\ ' 



[27] 



