The genuine works of Hippocrates, Vol. 1 · Hippocrates
SECTION I
ON THE ORIGIN OF GRECIAN MEDICINE, WITH A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF HIPPOCRATES. It is well known that the oldest documents which we possess relative to the practice of Medicine, are the various treatises contained in the Collection which bears the name of Hippocrates. Their great excellence has been acknowledged in all ages, and it has always been a question which has naturally excited literary curiosity, by what steps the art had attained to such perfection at so early a period. This investigation, however, is attended with peculiar difficulties, and has never been marked by any very satisfactory results. At one time, indeed, it was usual to solve the question by supposing that Greece had derived all the arts and sciences, in a state of considerable advancement, from the oriental nations, who are admitted to have possessed a considerable degree of civilization before the Hellenic race became distinguished for intellectual development.[2] The question with regard to the origin of Medicine was thus supposed to have met with a satisfactory solution. For, it being generally admitted that the Hippocratic Medicine had emerged from the schools of philosophy, and it having been assumed as incontrovertible that the early philosophy of the Greeks had been derived from the East, the inference appeared to be quite legitimate that medicine, in a state of considerable advancement, had been imported from the same quarter.
Recent research, however, has cast great doubts on the supposed descent of Grecian philosophy from a foreign source, and it is now pretty generally admitted that the Orientals, in early times, had never made any considerable progress in mental science.[3] Instead, then, of looking upon philosophy as having been an exotic production in the land of Hellas, we have every reason to believe that it was, what its inhabitants, in the noble pride of political freedom and intellectual superiority, boasted that their forefathers had been, namely, “the offspring of their own soil.”[4] Since the philosophy of the Greeks was indigenous, there is every reason to suppose that their medicine was so in like manner. How long the union between medicine and philosophy had subsisted before the time of Hippocrates, has not been determined upon any contemporary evidence, but the disciples of Pythagoras, in after ages, did not hesitate to ascribe to him the honor of effecting this alliance.[5] However this may be, it appears to me very doubtful whether these philosophers ever practised medicine as a craft. Indeed, it is much more likely that they merely speculated upon the phenomena of disease. Thus we shall see afterwards, that Plato himself did not discard speculative medicine from his system of philosophy, although we are quite sure that he never practised it as an art. But this connection between medicine and philosophy was by no means regarded, in after times, as having been favorable to the advancement of the former, for we find Hippocrates complimented by Celsus for having brought about a separation between them.[6]
It is clearly established that, long before the birth of philosophy, medicine had been zealously and successfully cultivated by the Asclepiadæ, an order of priest-physicians that traced its origin to a mythical personage bearing the distinguished name of Æsculapius. Two of his sons, Podalirius and Machaon, figure in the Homeric poems, not however as priests, but as warriors possessed of surgical skill in the treatment of wounds, for which they are highly complimented by the poet. It was probably some generations after this time (if one may venture a conjecture on a matter partaking very much of the legendary character) that Æsculapius was deified, and that Temples of Health, called _Asclepia_, presided over by the Asclepiadæ, were erected in various parts of Greece, as receptacles for the sick, to which invalids resorted in those days for the cure of diseases, under the same circumstances as they go to hospitals and spas at the present time. What remedial measures were adopted in these temples we have no means of ascertaining so fully as could be wished, but the following facts, collected from a variety of sources, may be pretty confidently relied upon for their accuracy.
In the first place, then, it is well ascertained that a large proportion of these temples were built in the vicinity of thermæ, or medicinal springs, the virtues of which would no doubt contribute greatly to the cure of the sick.[7] At his entrance into the temple, the devotee was subjected to purifications, and made to go through a regular course of bathing, accompanied with methodical frictions, resembling the oriental system now well known by the name of _shampooing_. Fomentations with decoctions of odoriferous herbs were also not forgotten. A total abstinence from food was at first prescribed,[8] but afterwards the patient would no doubt be permitted to partake of the flesh of the animals which were brought to the temples as sacrifices. Every means that could be thought of was used for working upon the imagination of the sick, such as religious ceremonies of an imposing nature, accompanied by music, and whatever else could arouse their senses, conciliate their confidence, and in certain cases, contribute to their amusement.[9] In addition to these means, it is believed by many intelligent Mesmerists of the present day, that the aid of Animal magnetism was called in to contribute to the cure;[10] but on this point the proof is not so complete as could be wished.
Certain it is, however, that as the Mesmerists administer medicines which are suggested to the imagination of patients during the state of clairvoyance, the Asclepiadæ prescribed drugs as indicated in dreams. These, indeed, were generally of a very inert description; but sometimes medicines of a more dangerous nature, such as hemlock and gypsum, were used in this way,[11] and regular reports of the effects which they produced were kept by the priests in the temples. It is also well known that the Asclepiadæ noted down with great care the symptoms and issue of every case, and that, from such observations, they became in time great adepts in the art of prognosis. When we come to an analysis of the different Hippocratic treatises, it will be seen that there is strong reason to believe we are still possessed of two documents composed from the results of observations made in the ancient Temples of Health.
It would also contribute much to the increase of medical knowledge in this way, that the office of priesthood was hereditary in certain families, so that information thus acquired would be transmitted from father to son, and go on accumulating from one generation to another.[12] Whether the Asclepiadæ availed themselves of the great opportunities which they must undoubtedly have had of cultivating human and comparative anatomy, has been much disputed in modern times; indeed, the contrary is expressly maintained by some eminent authorities, such as Gruner[13] and Sprengel.[14] But it will be shown in another place, that there is good reason for believing that these two scholars have greatly underrated the amount of anatomical knowledge possessed by Hippocrates, and his predecessors the priest-physicians in the Temples of Health. Moreover, it is worthy of remark, that Galen holds Hippocrates to have been a very successful cultivator of anatomy.[15] Galen further states, upon the authority of Plato,[16] that the Asclepiadæ paid no attention to dietetics; but this opinion would require to be received with considerable modification, for, most assuredly, whoever reflects on the great amount of valuable information on this subject which is contained in the Hippocratic treatises, will not readily bring himself to believe that it could have been all collected by one man, or in the course of one generation.
It is worthy of remark, moreover, that Strabo, whose authority I need scarcely say stands deservedly high in all literary matters, does not hesitate to affirm that Hippocrates was trained in the knowledge of dietetics, from documents preserved in the Asclepion of Cos.[17] That gymnastics, as stated by Galen,[18] wire not recognized as a regular branch of the healing art, until the age of Hippocrates, is indeed not improbable, and this perhaps is what Plato meant when he says that the Asclepiadæ did not make any use of the pedagogic art until it was introduced by Herodicus. But at the same time there can be no doubt, as further stated by Galen,[19] that exercise, and especially riding on horseback, constituted _one_ of the measures used by the Asclepiadæ for the recovery of health, having been introduced by Æsculapius himself. Of the _Asclepia_ we have mentioned above, it will naturally be supposed that some were in much higher repute than others, either from being possessed of peculiar advantages, or from the prevalence of fashion. In the beginning of the fifth century before the Christian era, the temples of Rhodes, Cnidos, and Cos were held in especial favor, and on the extinction of the first of these, another rose up in Italy in its stead.[20] But the temple of Cos was destined to throw the reputation of all the others into the background, by producing among the priests of Æsculapius the individual who, in all after ages, has been distinguished by the name of the GREAT HIPPOCRATES.[21]
Before proceeding, however, to give a brief sketch of his biography, I may state, partly by way of recapitulation, and partly in anticipation of what will be found in a subsequent part of this work, the leading facts which are known relative to the state of medicine before his time. 1. The origin of Grecian medicine is involved in impenetrable darkness, being anterior to all authentic history, and nothing being known either as to its rise or the steps by which it grow up to be a regular art. 2. There is no reason to suppose that the germs of medical science, any more than those of philosophy, had been originally imported into Greece from the East. 3. The earliest practitioners of medicine concerning whom we have any authentic information, were the Asclepiadæ, or priest-physicians, who endeavored to cure the sick partly by superstitious modes of working upon the imagination, and partly by more rational means, suggested by observation and a patient study of the phenomena of disease. 4. Though the men of letters who directed their attention to the phenomena of disease, as constituting a branch of philosophy, may in so far have improved the theory of medicine by freeing it from the trammels of superstition, it is not likely they could have contributed much to the practice of medicine, which is well known to be founded on observation and experience.
5. Though there can be little or no doubt that the priest-physicians, and the philosophers together, were possessed of all the knowledge of medicine which had been acquired at that time, it is not satisfactorily ascertained by what means the art had attained that remarkable degree of perfection which we shall soon see that it exhibited in the hands of Hippocrates. But I must now proceed with my Sketch of his Life. * * * * * That Hippocrates was lineally descended from Æsculapius was generally admitted by his countrymen, and a genealogical table, professing to give a list of the names of his forefathers, up to Æsculapius, has been transmitted to us from remote antiquity. Although I am well aware that but little reliance can be put on these mythical genealogies, I will subjoin the list to this section, in order that it may be at hand for reference, as many allusions will have to be made to it in the subsequent pages.[22]
Of the circumstances connected with the life of Hippocrates little is known for certain, the only biographies which we have of him being all of comparatively recent date, and of little authority. They are three in number, and bear the names of Soranus Ephesins, Suidas, and Tzetzes. Of the age in which the first of these authors flourished, nothing is known for certain; the second is a lexicographer, who lived in the beginning of the eleventh century; and the third flourished in the twelfth century. The birth of Hippocrates is generally fixed, upon the authority of Soranus, as having occurred in the first year of the 80th Olympiad, that is to say, in the 460th year before the vulgar era. On this point, however, I must say that I see no good grounds for the unanimity of opinion which has generally prevailed among modern scholars. In fact, the counter-evidence of Aulus Gellius has always appeared to me to be unjustly overlooked, as I cannot but think that his authority ought to rank much higher than that of Soranus, of whom nothing is known, not even the century in which he lived.
Aulus Gellius, then, in an elaborate disquisition on Greek and Roman chronology, states decidedly that Socrates was contemporary with Hippocrates, but younger than he.[23] Now it is well ascertained, that the death of Socrates took place about the year 400 A.C., and as he was then nearly seventy years old, his birth must be dated as happening about the year 470 A.C. This statement would throw the birth of Hippocrates back several years beyond the common date, as given by Soranus. There is also much uncertainty as to the time of his death: according to one tradition he died at the age of 85, whereas others raise it to 90, 104, and even 109 years. These dates of his birth and death, although vague, are sufficient to show that the period at which we may reasonably suppose he had practised his profession with the greatest activity and reputation, must have been the latter part of the fifth century A.C. It will readily occur to the reader, then, that our author flourished at one of the most memorable epochs in the intellectual development of the human race.
He had for his contemporaries, Pericles, the famous statesman; the poets Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Pindar; the philosopher Socrates, with his distinguished disciples Plato and Xenophon; the venerable father of history, Herodotus, and his young rival, Thucydides; the unrivalled statuary, Phidias, with his illustrious pupils, and many other distinguished names, which have conferred immortal honor on the age in which they lived, and exalted the dignity of human nature. Nor was Greece the only region of the earth remarkable at this time for moral and intellectual improvement; for, if we may believe oriental chronology, Confucius and Zoroaster had gone off the stage of life only a very few years before the dawn of this celebrated age of Grecian superiority in the arts and sciences. Hippocrates, it thus appears, came into the world under circumstances which must have co-operated with his own remarkable powers of intellect in raising him to that extraordinary eminence which his name has attained in all ages.
From his forefathers he inherited a distinguished situation in one of the most eminent hospitals, or Temples of Health, then in existence, where he must have enjoyed free access to all the treasures of observations collected during many generations, and at the same time would have an opportunity of assisting his own father in the management of the sick.[24] Thus from his youth he must have been familiar with the principles of medicine, both in the abstract and in the concrete,--the greatest advantage, I may be permitted to remark, which any tyro in the healing art can possibly enjoy. In addition to all this, he had excellent opportunities of estimating the good and bad effects resulting from the application of gymnastic exercises in the cure of diseases, under the tuition of Herodicus, the first person who is known for certain to have cultivated this art as a branch of medicine.[25] He was further instructed in the polite literature and philosophy of the age, by two men of classical celebrity, Gorgias and Democritus; the latter of whom is well known to have devoted much attention to the study of medicine, and its cognate sciences, comparative anatomy and physiology. Initiated in the theory and first principles of medicine, as now described, Hippocrates no doubt commenced the practice of his art in the Asclepion of Cos, as his forefathers had done before him. Why he afterwards left the place of his nativity, and visited distant regions of the earth, whither the duties of his profession and the calls of humanity invited him, cannot now be satisfactorily determined.
The respect paid to him in his lifetime by the good and wise in all the countries which he visited, and the veneration in which his memory has been held by all subsequent generations, are more than sufficient to confute the base calumny, invented, no doubt, by some envious rival, that he was obliged to flee from the land of his nativity in consequence of his having set fire to the library attached to the Temple of Health, at Cnidos, in order that he might enjoy a monopoly of the knowledge which he had extracted from the records which it had contained.[26] Certain it is, that he afterwards visited Thrace, Delos, Thessaly, Athens, and many other regions, and that he practised, and probably taught, his profession in all these places.[27] There are many traditions of what he did during his long life, but with regard to the truth of them, the greatest diversity of opinion has prevailed in modern times.
Thus he is said to have cured Perdiccas, the Macedonian king, of love-sickness; and although there are circumstances connected with this story which give it an air of improbability, it is by no means unlikely that he may have devoted his professional services to the court of Macedonia, since very many of the places mentioned in his works as having been visited by him, such as Pella and Acanthus, are situated in that country; and further, in confirmation of the narrative, it deserves to be mentioned, that there is most satisfactory evidence of his son Thessalus having been court physician to Archelaus, king of Macedonia;[28] and it is well ascertained that another of his descendants, the Fourth Hippocrates, attended Roxane, the queen of Alexander the Great.[29] Our author’s name is also connected with the great plague of Athens, the contagion of which he is reported to have extinguished there and in other places, by kindling fires.[30] The only serious objection to the truth of this story is the want of proper contemporary evidence in support of it.
It is no sufficient objection, however, that Thucydides, in his description of the circumstances attending the outbreak of the pestilence in Attica, makes no mention of any services having been rendered to the community by Hippocrates; while, on the contrary, he states decidedly that the skill of the physicians could do nothing to mitigate the severity of this malady. It is highly probable, that, if Hippocrates was actually called upon to administer professional assistance in this way, it must have been during one of the subsequent attacks or exacerbations of the disease which occurred some years afterwards. We know that this plague did not expend its fury in Greece during one season, and then was no more heard of; but on the contrary, we learn that it continued to lurk about in Athens and elsewhere, and sometimes broke out anew with all its original severity. Thucydides briefly mentions a second attack of the plague at Athens about two years after the first,[31] attended with a frightful degree of mortality; nor is it at all improbable that this was not the last visitation of the malady.
Though the name of Hippocrates, then, may not have been heard of at its first invasion, it is not at all unlikely that, after he had risen to the head of his profession in Greece, as we know that he subsequently did, he should have been publicly consulted regarding the treatment of the most formidable disease which was prevailing at the time.[32] What adds an appearance of truth to the tale is, that several of the genuine works of Hippocrates, which were probably published in its lifetime, relate to the causes and treatment of epidemic and endemic diseases.[33] That the magistrates of Athens, then, should have applied to him as the most eminent authority on the subject, to assist them in their sanitary regulations[34] during the prevalence of this great pestilence, is so far from being improbable, that I think it would have been very extraordinary if they had omitted to consult him, seeing that he was undoubtedly looked up to as the _facile princeps_ among the physicians of the day. That his services in this way have been exaggerated by the blind admiration of his worshipers, both at that time and in after ages, may be readily admitted; but this circumstance ought not to make us reject the whole story as being fabulous. I repeat, then, that although this part of the history of Hippocrates be not vouched by any contemporary evidence, it is by no means devoid of probability, while the objections which have been started to it by modern authorities have not so much weight as is generally supposed.
Another circumstance in the life of Hippocrates, for the truth of which Soranus, Suidas, and a host of ancient authorities concur in vouching, namely, that he refused a formal invitation to pay a professional visit to the court of Persia, is rejected with disdain by almost all the modern scholars who have touched upon this subject. But was it an uncommon thing for the king of Persia to manœuvre in this way with Grecian talent in order to attract it to his court? So far is the contrary known to be the case that, as every person who is familiar with the early history of Greece must be well aware, the manner in which “the Great King” rendered himself most formidable to the Grecian Republics after the humiliating defeats which the military forces of Persia had sustained at Marathon, Salamis, and Platæa, was by intriguing with all those distinguished persons in Greece who would render themselves accessible to his bribes and flatteries, and thus endeavoring to detach them from the cause of their country. Of this we have notable examples in the case of two illustrious individuals, who were nearly contemporary with Hippocrates--I mean Pausanias and Themistocles.
Moreover, it is well known that Grecian physicians at all times were in high repute at the court of Babylon;[35] witness Ctesias, the contemporary and kinsman of Hippocrates,[36] who was court physician to the king of Persia, and was employed in that capacity in the most serious emergencies.[37] What more natural, then, or more likely to happen, than that the king of Persia, when he saw his country overrun by the plague,[38] should seek advice from a neighboring people, whose superiority to his own subjects in all the arts of war and peace he and his predecessors had learned from sad experience? I readily admit that the letters in the Hippocratic Collection which relate to this story can scarcely be received as genuine; but does this prove that the event upon which they are made to turn is also devoid of truth? I can see no probability in this supposition; for whether we regard these documents as willful forgeries, executed with the fraudulent intention of palming them on the literary world as genuine productions, or whether we look upon them as mere exercises made on given subjects by the Sophists or Scholiasts to display their ability in sustaining an assumed character, it would have been preposterous to make them relate to stories of which every person of that age must have been able to detect the falsehood. Were any person at the present day, from whatever motive, desirous of palming upon the public certain letters said to have been written by the celebrated John Hunter, he would surely not be so imprudent as to endeavor to pass off as genuine a correspondence purporting to have taken place between him and the king of France, as every one at all acquainted with professional biography, would at once perceive that the authenticity of the documents in question was completely disproved by the falsity of the narrative upon which they are founded.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.