MEDICINE. 
Among the Greeks, however, ^scnlapiiis, 
was reckoned the most eminent practi- 
tioner of liis time, and his name continued 
to be revered after his deatli. He was 
ranked amongst the gods ; and the principal 
knowledge of the medicinal art remained 
with his family to the time of Hippocrates, 
who reckoned himself the seventeenth in a 
lineal descent from jEscnlapins, and who 
was truly the first w'lio treated of medicine 
in a regular and rational manner, 
Hippocrates, who is supposed to have 
lived four hundred years before the birth 
of Christ, is the most ancient author whose 
writings have descended to the present 
day : and he is hence justly regarded as 
the father of medicine. In his period, 
and indeed till a century or two ago, the 
distinct branches of medicine and surgery 
were studied and practised by the same 
person. Hippocrates, therefore, has been 
universally regarded as having contributed 
equally to onr physiological and anatomical 
knowledge of the human frame, and the few 
anecdotes relating to him for which we can 
find room, has been already communicated 
to the reader under the article Anatomy. 
We shall here therefore only add those 
opinions of the Coan sage, which more im- 
mediately apply to the science of thera- 
peutics, and which are most entitled to 
general attention. 
As far as Hippocrates attempts to explain 
the causes of disease, he refers much to the 
humours of the body, particularly to the 
blood and the bile. He treats also of the 
effects of sleep, watchings, exercise, and 
rest, and all the benefit or mischief w'e 
may receive from them ; of all the causes of 
diseases, however, mentioned by Hippo- 
crates, the most general are diet and air. On 
the subject of diet he has composed several 
books, and in the choice of this he was 
exactly careful; and the more .so, as his 
practice turned almost wholly upon it. He 
also considered the air very much, he ex- 
amined what winds blew ordinarily or ex- 
traordinarily ; he considered the irregu- 
larity of the seasons, the rising and setting 
of the stars, or the time of certain constel- 
lations ; also the time of the solstices, and 
of the equinoxes^ those days, in his opinion, 
producing great alterations in certain dis- 
tempers; he does not, however, pretend to 
explain how, from these causes, that va- 
riety of diseases arises which is daily to be 
observed. All that can be gathered from 
him with regard to this is, that the different 
causes above mentioned, when applied to 
the different parts of the body, produce a 
great variety of disorders; some of titese 
he accounted mortal, others dangerous, and 
the rest easily curable, according to the 
cause from whence they spring, and the 
parts on which they fall : in several places, 
also, he distinguishes diseases, from the time 
of their duration, into acute or short, and 
chronical or long. He likewise distin- 
guishes diseases by the particular places 
where they prevail whether ordinary or ex- 
traordinary. The first, that is, those that 
are frequent and familiar to certain places, 
he called endemic diseases ; and the latter, 
which ravaged extraordinarily, sometimes 
in one place, sometimes in another, which 
seized great numbers at certain times, he 
called epidemic, that is, popular diseases; 
and of this kind the most terrible is the 
plague. He likewise mentions a third kind, 
the opposite of the former ; and these he 
calls sporadic, or straggling diseases : these 
last include all the different sorts of distem- 
pers which invade any one season, which 
are sometimes of one sort and sometimes 
of another. He distinguished between those 
diseases which are hereditary, or born with 
us, and those which are contracted after- 
wards ; and likewise between those of a 
kindly, and such as are of a malignant na- 
ture ; the former of which are easily and 
frequently cured, while the latter give phy- 
sicians a great deal of trouble, and are sel- 
dom overcome by all their care. 
A foundation for the tlieoi’y and practice 
of medicine being thus laid, the science 
was pursued with great avidity by Prax». 
goras, who nevertheless ventured, in some 
respects, to oppose the practice of Hippo- 
crates, and by Erasistratus and Herophilus, 
of whom the last, as a disciple of Praxago- 
ras, inclined rather to the Praxagorean than 
the Hippocratic school. Erasistratus. how- 
ever, acquired a higher fame, though a more 
steady adherent to the older and Hippocra- 
tic doctrines, and to him we are indebted 
for the fii sf regular indications of the pulse. 
About this period the profession of medi- 
cine began to be divided into the three 
branches of dietetic, pharmaceutic, and chi- 
rurgic ; or those who pretended to cure by 
regimen alone, disregarding, and even de- 
spising, pharmacy ; those who undertook 
to cure chiefly by pharmaceutic prepara- 
tions (of which number was Erasistratui 
himself) ; and those who devoted their whole 
time ami attention to the chirurgical de- 
partment of the medical art. 
The next division of medical practitioners 
