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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. Alcmaeon
was a physician rather than a philosopher, and
asserted that health was an ἰσονομία of these opposites
and disease a μοναρχία of one. This doctrine had a
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