Historical Relations 95 



In doing so he traces laws, seeing essential unity behind apparent 

 diversity. There is, however, another class of thinker who is no 

 less occupied in seeking unity in diversity, but who is concerned 

 with a much wider field than is the working man of science. The 

 philosopher or religionist may well adopt the conclusions of the 

 scientific observer. Nevertheless he is occupied in a different 

 task and applies a different method. 



One of the reasons why ancient science was not more successful 

 in solving specific problems was precisely that ancient thinkers 

 were less able than ourselves to forsake even temporarily the great 

 general problems or, indeed, to differentiate the one type of in- 

 vestigation from the other. Some there were, however, in antiquity 

 who did succeed in distinguishing between the two categories. 

 The first writer to make clear in practice this separation between 

 science and philosophy is said by tradition to have been the Coan 

 physician, Hippocrates the Great. If, therefore, Greek philosophy 

 — or a department of it — sought to give a rational basis to our 

 knowledge of the world, it was Greek medicine that first put that 

 rational basis to the test. 



There is one great monument of the rational spirit in medicine 

 to which we must specially refer. This book was composed a 

 little before 400 B.C. It is the first work that has come down to 

 us in which the scientific is clearly set over against the religious 

 point of view and it deals with what is described as the Sacred 

 disease, the condition that we nowadays call epilepsy. 



We are here not at all concerned with the hypothesis proposed 

 by the unknown author of this very remarkable work to explain the 

 phenomena that he is describing. He is led to this hypothesis by 

 a general law which he thinks he has discovered behind the diverse 

 phenomena of the disease. What is of importance for our purpose 

 is that the book presents to the reader two opposing views of the 

 nature of disease. One view, which is rejected, is based on that 

 form of religion in which the more striking phenomena at least 

 are ascribed to the action of supernatural pov^^ers. The other 

 view, claiming the disease as the result of the inevitable action of a 

 natural law, may be classed as a scientific hypothesis. Incidentally 

 the book contains a hint that such laws are of universal application. 

 The essential part of this most remarkable work we shall proceed 

 to render in a greatly abbreviated and somewhat paraphrased form. 



" As regards the disease called Sacred, to me it appears to be no 



