A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



tempt to visualize them. Democritus, on the other 

 hand, refused to recognize this barrier. Where he 

 could not know, he still did not hesitate to guess. 

 Just as he conceived his atom of a definite form with a 

 definite structure, even so he conceived that the at- 

 mosphere about him was full of invisible spirits; he 

 accepted the current superstitions of his time. Like 

 the average Greeks of his day, he even believed in such 

 omens as those furnished by inspecting the entrails of a 

 fowl. These chance bits of biography are weather- 

 vanes of the mind of Democritus. They tend to sub- 

 stantiate our conviction that Democritus must rank 

 below Anaxagoras as a devotee of pure science. But, 

 after all, such comparisons and estimates as this are 

 utterly futile. The essential fact for us is that here, 

 in the fifth century before our era, we find put forward 

 the most penetrating guess as to the constitution of 

 matter that the history of ancient thought has to pre- 

 sent to us. In one direction, the avenue of progress 

 is barred ; there will be no farther step that way till 

 we come down the centuries to the time of Dal ton. 



HIPPOCRATES AND GREEK MEDICINE 



These studies of the constitution of matter have car- 

 ried us to the limits of the field of scientific imagination 

 in antiquity; let us now turn sharply and consider a 

 department of science in which theory joins hands with 

 practicality. Let us witness the beginnings of scien- 

 tific therapeutics. 



Medicine among the early Greeks, before the time 

 of Hippocrates, was a crude mixture of religion, nec- 

 romancy, and mysticism. Temples were erected to 



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