THE FINAL SYSTEM: GALEN 



he was a logician and a rhetorician, a master 

 of speech and composition. He was instructed 

 in all branches of natural philosophy or science. 

 A physicist in his ultimate considerations of 

 the constituents of the human organism as a 

 part of Nature, he was far more actively a 

 biologist in his investigation of the same. His 

 writings show medicine as part of biology. 

 And indeed his treatment of medicine as the 

 centre of a larger whole indicates the Greek 

 unity of science, a unity afterwards to be lost, 

 but today gradually reviving in the thought of 

 those who see that the formal barriers between 

 the sciences are vicious obstructions. 



Hippocrates regarded medicine as the heal- 

 ing art. Although in fact he proceeded scien- 

 tifically, following the method of observation 

 and induction, and necessarily making use of 

 working hypotheses, nevertheless as far as 

 possible he set himself against theory. He 

 refused to base medical practice upon theories 

 as to the constitution of the world and man, 

 and protested against permitting such to divert 

 the practitioner from the teaching of his ex- 

 perience. The rival school of Cnidus may 

 have tried to be more scientific, in the sense 

 of seeking to conform their practice to basic 



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