[p. xxx]
which were collected in Alexandrine times, to be
re-copied and perhaps increased by volumes which
did not belong to the original collection.
It may be urged that if the Hippocratic Corpus
were originally a library, it is improbable that all the
treatises composing it would be written in Ionic. But
it is by no means certain when Ionic ceased to be the
normal medium for medical science ; for all we
know the dialect may have been in vogue until long
after the κοινή established itself throughout the
Greek world. Moreover, we do not know what
levelling forces were at work among copyists and
librarians, inducing them to assimilate the dialects
of medical works to a recognized model. We do know,
however, that as centuries passed more and more
Ionisms, most of them spurious, were thrust upon
the Hippocratic texts. The process we can trace in
the later history of the text may well have been
going on, in a different form, in the fourth and third
centuries B.C.
It is because I regard the Hippocratic collection
as merely a library that I do not consider it worth
while to attempt an elaborate classification, like those
of Littré, Greenhill, Ermerins, and Adams. A library
is properly catalogued according to subject matter,
date, and authorship ; it is of little use to view each
separate volume in its relationship to a particular
writer. The Hippocrates of tradition and the Hippocrates
of the commentators may well be left
buried in obscurity and uncertainty. What we do
know, what must be our foundation stone, is that
certain treatises in the Corpus are impressed with
the marks of an outstanding genius, who inherited
much but bequeathed much more. He stands for
