Hippocrates Collected Works I

Hippocrates Collected Works I

Digital Hippocrates Collection Table of Contents

GENERAL INTRODUCTION
  1. Greek Medicine and Hippocrates
  2. The Hippocratic Collection
  3. Means of Dating Hippocratic Works
  4. Plato's References to Hippocrates
  5. THE COMMENTATORS AND OTHER ANCIENT AUTHORITIES.
  Galen
  6. LIFE OF HIPPOCRATES.
  7. THE ASCLEPIADAE.
  8. THE DOCTRINE OF HUMOURS.
  9. CHIEF DISEASES MENTIONED IN THE HIPPOCRATIC COLLECTION.
  10. POLU/S AND O)LI/GOS IN THE PLURAL.
  11. THE IONIC DIALECT OF THE HIPPOCRATIC COLLECTION.
  12. MANUSCRIPTS.

ANCIENT MEDICINE
  INTRODUCTION
  ANCIENT MEDICINE
  APPENDIX

AIRS WATERS PLACES
  INTRODUCTION
  MSS. AND EDITIONS.
  AIRS WATERS PLACES

EPIDEMICS I AND III
  INTRODUCTION
  EPIDEMICS I
  EPIDEMICS III: THE CHARACTERS
  EPIDEMICS III
  SIXTEEN CASES

THE OATH
Introduction
OATH

PRECEPTS
INTRODUCTION
PRECEPTS

NUTRIMENT
INTRODUCTION
NUTRIMENT

This electronic edition is funded by the National Library of Medicine History of Medicine Division. This text has been proofread to a low degree of accuracy. It was converted to electronic form using Data Entry.

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

8. THE DOCTRINE OF HUMOURS.

became interested in the organs of man and their functions.
Empedocles, Philistion and Pausanias were the chief pioneers in this union of philosophy with medicine which the writer of Ancient Medicine so much deplores. See Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, pp. 234, 235 (also Galen X. 5, οἱ ἐκ τῆς Ἰταλίας ἰατροὶ Φιλιστίων τε καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ Παυσανίας καὶ οἱ τούτων ἑταῖροι.)

The second of the Greek philosophers, Anaximander,
He was also interested in biology. See Burnet, pp. 72, 73.
taught that creation was made up of "opposites," though it is not clear how many he conceived these opposites to be. Many later thinkers, working on lines similar to those of Anaximander, made them four in number--the hot, the cold, the moist and the dry. These were the essential qualities of the four elements, fire, air, water, earth.

There was, however, no uniformity among thinkers as to the number of the opposites, and Alcmaeon, a younger contemporary of Pythagoras and a native of Croton, postulated an indefinite number.
Aristotle Meta. A 986 a 31 : φης1ὶ γὰρ ἔναι δύο τὰ πολλὰ τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων, λέγων τὰς ἐναντιότητας οὐχ ὥς1περ οὗτοι [sc. οἱ Πυθαγόρειοι] διωρισμένας ἀλλὰ τὰς τυχούσας, οἷον λευκὸν μέλαν, γλυκύ πικρόν, ἀγαθὸν κακόν, μέγα μικρόν.
Alcmaeon was a physician rather than a philosopher, and asserted that health was an ἰσονομία of these opposites and disease a μοναρχία of one.
Aétius V. 30. 1, and Galen (Kéhn) XIX. 343: Ἀλκμαίων τῆς μὲν ὑγείας ἔναι συνεκτικὴν ἰσονομίαν τῶν δυνάμεων ὑγροῦ, θερμοῦ, ξηροῦ, ψυχροῦ, πικροῦ, γλυκέος καὶ τῶν λοιπῶν, τὴν δὲ ἐν αὐτοῖς μοναρχίαν νόσου ποιητικήν. See also 344: τὴν δὲ ύγείαν σύμμετρον τῶν ποιῶν τὴν κρᾶσιν. It would be interesting if the technical word κρᾶσις could be traced back to Alcmaeon himself.
This doctrine had a

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