[p. xi]
discarded, another element, equally disturbing, and
equally opposed to the progress of scientific medicine,
asserted itself. Philosophy superseded religion.
Greek philosophy sought for uniformity in the
multiplicity of phenomena, and the desire to find
this uniformity led to guesswork and to neglect of
fact in the attempt to frame a comprehensive theory.
The same impulse which made Thales declare that
all things are water led the writer of a treatise in
the Hippocratic Corpus to maintain that all diseases
are caused by air. As Daremberg
Histoire des sciences médicales, p. 82. | says, " the
philosophers tried to explain nature while shutting
their eyes." The first philosophers to take a serious
interest in medicine were the Pythagoreans.
AlcmaeonA young man in the old age of Pythagoras. See Aristotle
Meta. A 986 a 30. Alcmaeon was more interested in medicine
than in philosophy, but does not seem to have been a
" general practitioner." | of Croton, although perhaps not strictly
a Pythagorean, was closely connected with the sect,
and appears to have exercised considerable influence
upon the Hippocratic school. The founder of empirical
psychology and a student of astronomy, he held
that health consists of a state of balance between
certain " opposites," and disease an undue preponderance
of one of them. Philolaus, who flourished
about 440 B.C., held that bile, blood, and phlegm
were the causes of disease. In this case we have a
Pythagorean philosopher who tried to include medical
|