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Little is known of the life of HIPPOCRATES except that he was born at Cos, one of the Sporad islands near the Carian coast, in the second half of the fifth century B.C.; that he belonged to a family which had practiced the medical art for many generations, as priests of the god Asclepios; that he travelled widely, and that he resided for some time with Perdiccas, king of Macedonia. His grandfather bore the same name, as also did several of his descendants; and in this way, perhaps, it has come about that many works were attributed to him which are not of his composing. The few as to which the judgment of scholars is unanimous are, however, sufficient to justify his fame.
An order of priest-physicians, tracing their origin to a legendary hero or deity, Asclepios, called in Latin Æsculapius, was widely diffused through the islands and mainland of Greece during the centuries between Homer and Aeschylus, and retained a measure of influence till the fall of Polytheism. The traveller Pausanias, writing in the time of Antonines, mentions many of the shrines of this deity; one of them, that of Epidauros in Argolis, he describes minutely. It was placed, facing eastward, in a grove sheltered by hills, on which stood temples of Apollo and Artemis. The statue of the god Asclepios was of colossal size; in one hand was a staff, the other rested on a serpent's head; a hound lay at his feet. On the walls and ceilings were pictures and reliefs of Bellerophon slaying the Chimæra, Perseus with Medusa's head, Cupid holding the lyre, his arrows and bow cast aside. On a series of pillars were engraved the names of those who had been cured of their diseases, with a brief record of their treatment. For these temples of Asclepios were used as hospitals by the Greeks. Usually the sites were carefully chosen, so as to secure shelter from cold winds, sunny aspects, pure air and water. In the treatment, moral and physical remedies went together. Simple potions, and that kind of action on the skin and muscles which has been revived by modern medicine, were combined with fasting and prayer.
Upon this mass of theocratic experience, Hippocrates brought to bear the new positive spirit which, for more than a century, had been permeating the Grecian world--the spirit of unprejudiced observation and of careful search for law and orderly succession, as applied to the phenomena of disease. His denial of the doctrine that any one disease was of specially divine origin is significant. None, he said, was more or less divine than another. All were divine; all were subject to their own law of growth.
Before appreciating what he did, let us see clearly what it was impossible for him to do. Modern medicine, though not a science, since it deals with individuals, yet tends steadily to become a scientific art, founded on the science of Biology, which is itself dependent on the sciences of Chemistry and Physics. But for a physician in the fifth century B.C., a rational explanation of such facts as the action of the heart, the motions of limbs, respiration, digestion, and animal heat was impossible. The dependence of living organisms on outside forces he could not deny. But he knew not what these forces were, nor how they worked. Vague notions of planetary influence, of heat and cold, of dryness and moisture, supplied the void. Direct observation of the facts of disease was, of course, open to him as to physicians of our own time. But to observe without a theory, avowed or implicit, to connect the observations, is all but impossible; and yet, if the accepted theory be false, the observation will be warped. From this vicious circle it is the glory of Hippocrates to have escaped, so far as escape was possible. He carried out a long series of fine and accurate observations untinged, or nearly so, by false theory, guided implicitly by two profoundly positive conceptions, the Synergy, or co-operation, of the functions, and the action of the environment on the organism.
The characteristic feature of his method was that all his observations tended to Prognosis; that is, to a forecast of the course which the disease, left to itself, would follow. His treatise on Prognostic (and the same may be said of many of his Aphorisms) forms a practical commentary on Comte's motto, "Savoir, pour prévoir, afin de pourvoir" ("See that you may foresee, and so provide"). "He will manage the cure best," he says, "who foresees what is to happen from the present condition of the patient." "To such a physician," he continues, "men will be willing to intrust themselves." And this was fundamental; for, as the first of his Aphorisms has it, "It is not enough for the physician to do what is right himself; he must make the patient, the nurse, and all surrounding circumstances co-operate with him."
This is not the place for medical details. But his vivid picture of the signs of approaching death in acute disease is known to many through a passage of Lucretius. The sharp nose, the hollow eye, the collapsed temples; the ears cold, contracted, with everted lobe; the skin of the forehead rough, distended, parched; the color of the face green, black, livid, or leaden, are described with unsurpassable accuracy. And yet, here as always, he is careful to add that, for a sound judgment, not these signs alone but the whole series of antecedent facts, such as previous starvation or the reverse, must be taken into account. His whole work is a protest against specialism. He placed Prognosis above Diagnosis, as practiced at the neighbouring Asclepion of Cnidos. To us the nomenclature of disease, the detection of the particular organ or tissue involved, is far more important, and far more practicable, than in the time of Hippocrates. But, even so, it remains of greater consequence to keep in mind the essential unity of disease, to measure its intensity, to take into account personal constitution and surrounding circumstances. And this is what Hippocrates taught physicians to do.
On the physical environment Hippocrates has left us a masterpiece--his Treatise on Air, Water, and Places. It is a comprehensive study of climate in the largest sense, containing a mass of wise and fine observations on air and prevalent winds; on sunlight, water, soil; on seasonal changes and prevalent vegetation; and, finally, on the constitutional tendencies of various populations in Europe and Asia, which, when once formed by those influences, were perpetuated by heredity.
On the whole, then, it may be said that Hippocrates, by his large conception of the facts of disease, not merely founded the art of Medicine, now and henceforth set free from theocratic fetters, and destined to play so important a part in western civilization, but also prepared the way for the scientific study of Life, soon to be founded by Aristotle, and continued by the great school of Alexandria. Implicitly, but strongly, he grasped the two essential features of biological science, the correlation of functions, and the adjustment of organism to environment.
It remains to note those of his works which the best critics agree to be genuine. These are, the Aphorisms (with few exceptions); the Prognostics; the first and third books of the Epidemics (a clinical account of cases of disease occurring in Thasos, a relation to the prevailing character of the season); Regimen in Acute Disease; the treatise on Air, Water, and Places; and a work on Injuries of the Head. Finally, the oath to be tendered to all members of medical guilds is believed by most, though not by all, to be of his framing. It is certainly of the time of Hippocrates; and it embodies ethical traditions of Theocracy of the greatest value. The candidate for admission swore by Apollo the Physician, and Asklepios, to show final respect to his teacher; to share his knowledge freely with his brothers of the guild; within the house of the patient to behave with stainless honour, and never to divulge a secret.
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| This biography is
reprinted from The New Calendar of Great Men. Ed. Frederic
Harrison. London: Macmillan and Co., 1920. |
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