ETIOLOGY ACCORDING TO HIPPOCRATES. 



The doctrines of etiology took a more determinate form under the 

 teachings of Hippocrates. According to Hippocrates, disease has its 

 origin either in the regime of life or in the air that surrounds the 

 living body and enters into it. He made therefore a twofold etiolog- 

 ical division of diseases, those dependent on the personal regime, and 

 those dependent on the quality of the air. Eegarding the latter class, 

 when many individuals are attacked by the same disease at the same 

 time, he supposed the cause to be a common one, namely, the air 

 breathed. Hippocrates believed that a regime of life, which differs 

 with different persons, could not be the cause of a malady that attacks 

 alike the young, the old, men and women. On the other hand, when 

 diseases of different sorts occur, it was clear to him that the cause is 

 individual. Epidemic disease, according to the Father of Medicine, 

 is often promoted by a specific, unknown, and extraordinary condition 

 of the air due to the presence of the quid divinum, which may also 

 exist in miasms and certain other impure things. This quid divinum 

 has given much trouble to the followers and commentators of Hippoc- 

 rates, and the judgment as to what he conceived it to be must be left 

 to the fancy of the student of his writings. It seems probable, how- 

 ever, that Hippocrates meant the scourge of divine wrath. It was 

 this very idea that for centuries prevented the application of sanitary 

 measures to epidemic disease. Men regarded pestilence as a punish- 

 ment inflicted by the Almighty on delinquent humanity and an attempt 

 to turn aside a weapon borne in the divine hand was considered vain 

 and impious. 



The influence of Hippocrates's views, with their bearing on sanita- 

 tion, extended with slight abatement almost to the time when Fracas- 

 toro announced his doctrine of contagion. Throughout all this period, 

 moreover, the controlling power of Platonism held experimental 

 inquiry in check. It was believed that the true nature of things could 

 be discovered by the action of reason and not in any important degree 

 by experience and observation. Thus, it will be seen, the measures 

 directed against epidemic disease were often misguided, ineffective, 

 and dependent on all sorts of false doctrines. 



GALEN'S VIEWS OF EPIDEMIOLOGY. 



Galen, not dissenting from the views of Hippocrates, was of the 

 opinion that any disease that caused the almost simultaneous death of 

 a large number of people should be regarded as of the nature of pest. 

 He did not hold to any view of contagion in these maladies, that is, of 

 their direct communication of man to man, though he evidently 

 believed that the corruption of the air was more intense in the neigh- 

 borhood of the sick than elsewhere. Pest, he declared, was born of a 



