64 A SHORT HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



was rather in his attitude toward health and disease that his 

 real greatness lay. For, as far as we know, it was Hippocrates 

 who first insisted on regarding disease as a natural rather than a 

 supernatural process, and Hippocrates who first urged that care- 

 ful observation and study of the patient which entitles him to 

 rank as the original "clinician" of medical science. Again, it 

 was Hippocrates who first insisted on the existence and importance 

 of those processes of self-repair which are to-day recognized as 

 fundamental properties of living matter, processes summed up 

 in that famous phrase of his which has come down to us through 

 the Latin of the middle ages, vis medicatrix natures, "the 

 healing power of nature," one of the finest and truest of the tenets 

 of scientific medicine to-day. Finally, by advancing his famous 

 theory of the four humors, a theory which with minor modifications 

 was for some two thousand years afterwards the prevailing theory 

 of pathology, or the nature of disease, among the most enlight- 

 ened, Hippocrates still further established his right to be regarded 

 as the "father" of medicine, and the first (and only) medical man 

 ever authoritatively entitled "the Great." This theory crude 

 enough to-day held that health consists in the right mixture, 

 and disease in the wrong mixture, of four "humors" (juices) 

 of the body, viz. blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Here 

 again the great merit of Hippocrates' idea was that it directed 

 attention to the body itself, and hence to natural rather than 

 supernatural phenomena. 



The tone of the Hippocratic writings is well illustrated by the 

 titles of those accepted as probably genuine, e.g. On Airs, Waters, 

 and Places; On Epidemics; On Regimen in Acute Diseases; 

 On Fractures; On Injuries of the Head; etc. The so-called 

 Hippocratic Oath is rightly described by Gomperz as "a 

 monument of the highest rank in the history of civilization." 

 That this oath is still administered to graduates about to enter on 

 the practice of medicine, is sufficient evidence of the high char- 

 acter and far-sighted wisdom of its originator. (See Appendix.) 



THE SOPHISTS. In the fifth century B.C. political events fol- 

 lowing war with Persia made Athens supreme in Greece the 



