Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1921 Excerpt: ... of the Greeks.2 The method of the Hippocratic writers is that known to-day as the ' inductive '. Without the vast scientific heritage that is in our own hands, with only a comparatively small number of observations drawn from the Coan and neighbouring schools, surrounded by all manner of bizarre oriental religions in which no adequate relation of cause and effect was recognized, and 1 TlapayytXiai, 6. 2 See Fig. I. Fig. i. HIPPOCRATES British Museum, second or third century C. Fig. 2. ASCLEPIUS British Museum, fourth century B.C. above all constantly urged by the exuberant genius for speculation of that Greek people in the midst of whom they lived and whose intellectual temptations they shared, they remain nevertheless, for the most part, patient observers of fact, sceptical of the marvellous and the unverifiable, hesitating to theorize beyond the data, yet eager always to generalize from actual experience; calm, faithful, effective servants of the sick. There is almost no type of mental activity known to us that was not exhibited by the Greeks and cannot be paralleled from their writings; but careful and constant return to verification from experience, expressed in a record of actual observations--the habitual method adopted in modern scientific departments--is rare among them except in these early medical authors. The spirit of their practice cannot be better illustrated than by the words of the so-called ' Hippocratic oath '. That document, though of late date in its present form, throws a flood of light on the ethics of Greek medicine. 'I swear by Apollo the physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panacea, invoking all the gods and goddesses to be my witnesses, that I will fulfil this Oath and this written covenant to the best of my power and of..."
