GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE 



disease. 14 Viewed in this way they were more 

 knowable, their significance better understood, 

 than the finer distinctions between one disease 

 and another which admittedly outran the 

 knowledge of these practitioners. In practice 

 this generic knowledge was carefully adapted 

 to the particular case. The patient himself was 

 studied, his peculiar constitution taken account 

 of, and his symptoms were treated with refer- 

 ence to his condition. These physicians were 

 not tabulating diseases, they were set upon 

 meeting the exigencies of each case — trying 

 " to do good to the patient, or at least not 

 harm him." 



Accordingly, instead of finely distinguishing 

 diagnoses of the different diseases, Hippocrates 

 and his school worked out a general prognosis, 

 a detailed and comprehensive exposition of the 

 symptoms and course of acute disease, as ex- 

 emplified in pleurisy or pneumonia, and in 

 those various fevers so common in Greece. 

 This is the theme of the irpoyvoMTTinbv or 

 Prognosis, one of the most authentic of the 

 Hippocratic writings: "He seems to me the 

 best physician who is able to know in advance " 

 the entire group of phenomena constituting the 

 disease, to wit, to divine its previous conduct, 

 [28] 



