PRE-CLUSIAN PLANT WRITERS IN RELATION 
O ASTER 
I. Hippocrates . 
Hippocrates, ‘the father of medicine,” of perhaps * 460-377 
B. C., although mentioning + over 200 different plants, 236 accord- 
ing to Dierbach,} including a dozen or more of the Compositae, 
seems not to have mentioned the Aster by that name, but, instead, 
by the name polyopthalmon, or “the plant many-eyes.”’ 
Aster references to be expected in Hippocrates.—Later, at least 
from Cratevas onward, perhaps 100 B. C., the Aster Atticus held 
a place under its own name in the materia medica, and con- 
tinued to hold it almost two thousand years. Did it already hold 
such a place in the age of Hippocrates? and did it receive the 
sanction of his personal use? It would have been very gratify- 
ing had Hippocrates left us a treatise on the materia medica of 
his time, but none remains. A very ancient letter survives, ascribed 
in antiquity to Hippocrates, and addressed to the herbalist Cratevas, 
delivering over to the latter the responsibility of informing the 
future as to the materia medica of Hippocrates’ use ; Hippocrates 
had written of the diseases, in Cratevas the world would find the 
plants with which Hippocrates had cured them. Present criticism 
deems that this ancient epistle was wrongly ascribed to Hippocrates ; 
for Cratevas’ date on other evidence must be brought down to 
imed by most writers (and so Harper’s Classical Dictionary, 1897) following 
the statements of Soranus, to have lived 460-377 B. C., or later, Claimed by Adams, 
following Aulus Gellius, to have lived till shortly after the death of Socrates ; to have 
been older than Socrates; and therefore to have been born perhaps 480 B. C. or 
earlier 
tT Seventy-two works of Hippocrates which have been preserved, were so accredited 
and were all formed into one body even before they became known to the Alexandrian 
critics. Nineteenth century criticism has distinguished among these, several classes, of 
which ‘‘ The Genuine Works of Hippocrates ’’ were translated into English by Dr. 
Francis Adams for the Shdenhaun Society, London, 1849. Many of the other works 
appear to have been written by men of great ability, ime! ai Se from Hippocrates’ 
own time, and sharers of his theory and practice. Probably some of the writers, as 
claimed by Prof. Peck, were the five distinguished iesarans of Hi - aiaeeieni’ own 
family, his sons Thessalus and Dracon, son-in-law Polybus and his son’s sons both 
bearing their grandfather's name, Hippoc 
t Dierbach’s Arzneimittel des ae Heidelberg, 1821; ; fide ec 
(108 ) 
