THE HIPPOCRATICS 



and understood the care of surgical patients. 

 The efficiency of Greek surgery shows that the 

 absence of certain specific knowledge and 

 consequent practices now deemed essential, 

 does not preclude wise and successful treat- 

 ment/'' 



Among the Hippocratic qualities which de- 

 serve the gratitude of mankind, the first place 

 should be given to the spirit and method of this 

 great physician and his school, which stood 

 fast by observation and experience, guided and 

 systematized by large and consistent views of 

 the actual conduct of disease. August and 

 beneficent was the influence of this principle 

 and method through the following six hundred 

 years of Greek and Roman-Hellenistic medi- 

 cine, closing in the work of Galen. Advance 

 fifteen centuries further in the course of time 

 and chequered progress, and such great physi- 

 cians as Sydenham (162 4-1 689) and Boerhaave 

 ( 1 668-1 738), wearied with conflicting and all- 

 unproven medical theories, will — like many 

 others who have been fain to do so even to our 

 own day — be found reaching back to the 

 method of Hippocrates. 



Moreover, if the four humors have been 

 laughed out of court, the cognate principle of 



[37] 



