SCIENCE IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 53 



As medicine developed, the deductive method so 

 dear to the Greeks took possession, and preconceived 

 views about the nature of man or the origin of life 

 were used as the basis of medical treatment, and 

 doubtless cost many patients their lives. When 

 theorizing was kept within bounds, the art of medicine 

 made rapid progress ; the status of the physician rose 

 with it, and an excellent code of professional life was 

 adopted. 



Greek medicine culminated in the school of Hippo- 

 crates (450 B.C.), with a theory and practice of the art 

 resembling those which are current to-day, and far in 

 advance of the ideas of any intervening epoch till 

 modern times drew near. Disease was reckoned 

 as a process subject to natural laws. The insistence 

 on minute observation and careful interpretation of 

 symptoms led the way for the foundation of modern 

 clinical medicine, while many diseases were accurately 

 described and appropriate treatment indicated. But 

 it was not till later, probably at Alexandria, under 

 the sway of the Ptolemies, that human anatomy 

 and physiology received a proper basis of ascer- 

 tained fact by systematic human dissection, an 

 advance which may perhaps be attributed to the 

 opportunities afforded by the Egyptian custom of 

 preparing and embalming the bodies of the dead, 

 as well as to the influence of the old-established 

 medical science of the Nile valley. 



The atomic theory, as we have said, was extended, 

 even more speculatively than in physics, to bio- 

 logical questions. Lucretius describes the formation 

 of worlds and all possible forms of life by the " for- 

 tuitous concourse of atoms " in the chances of infinite 



