Hippocrates Collected Works I

Hippocrates Collected Works I
By Hippocrates
Edited by: W. H. S. Jones (trans.)

Cambridge Harvard University Press 1868

Digital Hippocrates Collection Table of Contents

PREFACE

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. πολύς AND ὀλίγος 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

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GENERAL INTRODUCTION

8. THE DOCTRINE OF HUMOURS.

[p. xlix]

ἔχει ἐν ἑωυτῷ αἷμα καὶ φλέγμα καὶ χολὴν ξανθήν τε καὶ μέλαιναν, καὶ ταῦτα ὲστὶν αὐτῷ ἡ φύς1ις . . . ὑγιαίνει μὲν οῦ̓ν μάλιστα ὁκόταν μετρίως ἔχῃ ταῦτα τῆς πρὸς ἄλληλα κρήσιος καὶ δυνάμιος καὶ τοῦ πλήθεος, καὶ μάλιστα μεμιγμένα ῆ̓́ κ.τ.λ. (Littré VI. 38 and 40).

Some thinkers, belonging to the school of Empedocles, and being more inclined towards philosophy than towards medicine, made the four chief opposites, materialized into fire, air, water and earth, the components of the body, and disease, or at any rate some of the chief diseases, an excess of one or other. We see this doctrine fairly plainly in Menon's account of Philistion,
Iatrica XX. : Φιλιστίων δ' οἴεται ἐκ δ̂ ἰδεῶν συνεστάναι ἡμᾶς, τοῦτ̓ ἔς1τιν ἐκ δ̄ στοιχείων: πυρός, ἀέρος, ὕδατος, γῆς. εῖναι δὲ καὶ ἑκάς1του δυνάμεις, τοῦ μὲν πυρὸς τὸ θερμόν, τοῦ δὲ ὰέρος τὸ ψυχρόν κ.τ.λ.
and it is copied by Plato in the Timaeus.
86 A: τὸ μὲν οὖν ἐκ πυρὸς ὑπερβολῆς μάλιστα νοσῆσαν σῶμα ξυνεχῆ καύματα καὶ πυρετοὺς ἀπεργάζεται, τὸ δ' ἐξ ἀέρος ἀμφημερινούς κ.τ.λ.

The doctrines I have described admitted many variations, and in Menon's Iatrica, which is chiefly an account of the origins of disease as given by various physicians, the most diverse views are set forth. Petron of Aegina, while holding that the body is composed of the four opposites, stated that disease was due to faulty diet, and that bile was the result and not the cause of disease.
Iatrica, XX.
Hippon thought that a suitable quantity of moisture was the cause of health ;
Ibid., XI.
Philolaus that disease was due to bile, blood and phlegm ;
Ibid., XVIII.
Thrasymachus of Sardis that blood, differentiated by excess of cold or heat into phlegm, bile, or τὸ σεσηπός (matter or pus), was