LINKAGE WITH THE MODERN TIME 



tion. This ordered store of clinical experience 

 will tell the practitioner when no application 

 of the " hot or cold " theory, but a regulated 

 diet, will benefit the patient. 



Yet the Hippocratics used working hypo- 

 theses of general application. They conceived 

 them as the fruits of medical experience. The 

 two most famous were the hypothesis of the 

 four humors and that of the vis medicatrix 

 naturae, the healing energy of nature herself. 

 The first has been discarded; but the second 

 is in some form and manner still accepted 

 universally in medicine and surgery. 



Another fundamental Hippocratic convic- 

 tion or hypothesis was that diseases came 

 from natural, not demonic, causes, and should 

 be treated by natural remedies rather than 

 by magic. It was this conviction that enabled 

 Greek medicine to become a rational art and 

 possible science. One sees at once its broad 

 affiliation. The assumption of the constant 

 action of natural causes underlies every me- 

 chanical art and all physical science. In 

 medicine, the hypothesis that disease is due to 

 natural causes, and should be treated by cor- 

 responding remedies, has had a chequered 

 career! Yet one will scarcely beg the question 



[131] 



