GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE ing whether the patient should have been pre- viously purged. Attention is to be paid to the stages of the disease and the condition of the J patient, and regard should be had to his usual habit of taking food, whether once a day or twice (sic). The physician must be cautious in changing the diet or increasing it when the disease takes a favorable turn. Greek physi- cians had constantly to treat pleurisies and pneumonias and enteric fevers; and one may question whether modern medical writing has anything wiser to say as to diet in such cases than this Hippocratic tract. It is not my purpose to recount the details , of Hippocratic practice, but rather to illustrate
its principles, its penetrating observation, its
Ifine and broad intelligence, its humane wisdom. Never was a practice so wise within the limita- tions of the practitioner's knowledge: that in- deed was very limited as to anatomy and physiology, — while the resources of the human constitution were better understood, as were the effects of climate and food. Hippocratic medicine recognized that dis- eases resulted from natural causes, and should be treated accordingly. This was a prodigious stride toward the light. It is always the task
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