THE HIPPOCRATICS 



be able to judge from a thorough acquaintance 

 with all the symptoms and a comparison of 

 their weightiness, not omitting a consideration 

 of the season of the year, yet being sure that 

 at every season bad symptoms prognosticate 

 ill and favorable symptoms good. . . . You 

 should not complain because the name of any 

 disease may not be mentioned here, for you 

 may know all such as come to a crisis in 

 the above mentioned times by the same symp- 

 toms." 



The Prognosis reflects the spirit and the 

 method of Hippocrates. Its refusal to follow 

 diagnoses into distinctions between diseases 

 which lay beyond any physician's knowl- 

 edge was part of this method and spirit; like- 

 wise its decision to abide by clinical experience 

 of acute disease and the significance of con- 

 stantly occurring symptoms. This safer knowl- 

 edge enabled the physician to foresee the 

 course of his patient's sickness, and if possible 

 conduct it to a cure. The salutary conception 

 of a sickness as a chain of phenomena, as a 

 whole, with a past, a present and a future, 

 would keep the physician's healing art from 

 crude empiricism and steady his practice 

 against haphazard remedies. The healing art 



[3i] 



