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AUTHOR:
TAYLOR, HENRY
OSBORN
TITLE:
GREEK BIOlOGY AND
MEDICINE.
PL A CE '
BOSTON.MASS.
DATE:
[C1922]
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES
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Taylor, Henry Osbom, 1856-1941.
Oroekbiolonry and n.edicine, by Henry Osborn Taylor. Bos-
ton, iviass., Marshall Jones company ('1922j
G. aH\'J.?,ts^^.a ^',rr:• «I fj>^,'° «-- -« «<>.«. editors:
"xNotes and bibliography" : p. 14.V151.
l^Blology-Hlst. 2^ Medicine. Greek and Roman. i. TlUe.
23—270
Library of Congress ' , " QH305.T3
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THE LIBRARIES
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EDITORS
George Depue Hadzsits, Ph.D.
University of Pennsylvania
David Moore Robinson, Ph.D., LL.D.
The Johns Hopkins University
^,
CONTRIBUTORS TO THE " OUR DEBT TO
GREECE AND ROME FUND," WHOSE
GENEROSITY HAS MADE POSSIBLE
THE LIBRARY
iDtxt SDebt to (Sttttt ann TSiomt
Philadelphia
Dr. Astley p. C. Ashhurst
John C. Bell
Henry H. Bonnell
Jasper Yeates Brinton
John Cadwalader
Miss Clara Comegys
Miss Mary E. Converse
Arthur G. Dickson
William M. Elkins
William P. Gest
John Gribbel
Samuel F. Houston
Alba B. Johnson
Miss Nina Lea
Mrs. John Markoe
Jules E. Mastbaum
J. Vaughan Merrick
Effingham B. Morris
William R. Murphy
John S. Newbold
S. Davis Page {memorial)
Owen J. Roberts
Joseph G. Rosengarten
John B. Stetson, Jr.
Dr. J. William White
(memorial)
The Philadelphia Society
for the Promotion of Liberal
Studies.
Boston
Oric Bates {memorial)
Frederick P. Fish
William Amory Gardner
Joseph Clark Hoppin
Chicago
Herbert W. Wolff
Detroit
John W. Anderson
Dexter M. Ferry, Jr.
New York
John Jay Chapman
Willard V. King
Mortimer L. Schiff
William Sloane
And one contributor, who
has asked to have his name
withheld:
Maecenas atavis edite regibus,
0 et praesidium et dtdce decus
meum.
Washington
The Greek Embassy at
Washington, for the Greek
Government.
tii]
GREEK BIOLOGY
AND MEDICINE
BY
HENRY OS BORN TAYLOR
MARSHALL JONES COMPANY
BOSTON • MASSACHUSETTS
n
t
!
COPYRIGHT-I92 2-BY MARSHALL JONES COMPANY
Copyright, Great Britain
All rights reserved
Printed November, 1922
ra)4-
y
To
THE NOBLE PROFESSION: WHOSE GOSPEL
IS THE HEALING OF MANKIND! WHOSE
HONOR IS THE HIPPOCRATIC OATH
4
{
«
THE PLIMPTON PR E S S • N OR W 0 OD • M A S S A CHUS ETTS
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
EDITORS' PREFACE
1
MANY READERS will find in the
pages of Doctor Taylor a revelation
in the amazing advance made by
Greek Biology and Medicine and in the extent
of our indebtedness to Hippocrates, Aristotle
and Galen. The subject is one not so well
known as some other aspects of the Greek and
Roman civilizations. We are apt to think of
magic and superstition in the medical practice
of the ancients, in spite of our Celsus and the
oracular Pliny. The specialist may have fol-
lowed the expositions of Sir William Osier,
Dr. Charles Singer, Sir Clifford Allbutt and
Dr. Arthur J. Brock, but this book is addressed
to the layman. It is our hope that a wider
and deeper interest will result in the achieve-
ments of those Greeks who laid the founda-
tions, permanent and secure, for the sciences
of Biology and Medicine.
The history of the influence of the Greek
biologists and medical men still remains to be
written, but it will be a fascinating chapter in
[vii]
editors' preface
the history of human culture. When the time
arrives, we shall have a record of fanatic de-
votion, of literal and uninspired acceptance,
of forgetfulness, of an inspiring rediscovery
with a quickening of scientific interest, of direct
observation of Nature's phenomena, with a
consequent skepticism toward ancient dogma,
and of a final great scientific revival which has
resulted in a recognition of the true worth of
the ancients. Through the mazes of Arabic
civilization, over the collapse of the religious
medieval period and the pride of the Re-
naissance, through the fourteenth and sixteenth
centuries, the great ancients have come to us.
It is largely through their inspiration that we
have learned our independent pursuit of Na-
ture's mysteries in the courageous Greek spirit
of love of truth, reason and freedom. Doubt-
less in the field of medicine, this has carried
with it a certain emancipation, as Gilbert
Murray has said, from the dead hand of the
past, but it is an emancipation from the errors
of the past alone. The twentieth century is
gradually approaching a true appraisal of the
values of the ancient medicine and biology,
so eloquently expressed years ago in Darwin's
gracious phrase.
[ viii ]
editors' preface
Dr. Taylor's volume on " Greek Biology and
Medicine " is the third to appear in the new
Library, " Our Debt to Greece and Rome."
The author has drawn his sketch in such a
way as to make clear the influence of ancient
biological and medical theories and of the
ancient medical practice upon our intellectual
life, to-day, giving frequent allusions to that
influence as it affected distinguished biologists
and men of medicine during the intervening
centuries. This is part of the larger plan of
the Library as a whole to show in some detail
the vitality of the ancient thought and to
make more articulate the significance it pos-
sesses for us. We all too unconsciously ac-
cept a heritage — scientific, intellectual, spir-
itual— which lies at the very core of our
being and is the real hope of an orderly future.
This book takes no formal account of the
famous Pompeian medical instruments, and
only further study of the Ebers papyrus and
in particular of the Edwin Smith papyrus may
lead to a new estimate of the progress of
medicine in ancient Egypt; but we are not yet
in a position to estimate the truth contained
in these venerable documents. And, for us,
Greece still stands as the pioneer in a science
[ix]
editors' preface
which will progress to its greatest victories as
it is quickened with the nobility of spirit that
touched the heart and mind of Hippocrates.
His words find an eloquent echo in the lines of
Goethe:
Ach Gott! die Kunst ist lang
Und kurz ist unser Leben,
which are an immortal commentary on the
inner essence of the Greek's aspiration.
I
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
Contributors to the Fund . . ii
Editors' Preface vii
Author's Preface xiii
I. The Early Biology .... 3
n. The Hippocratics ..... 12
HI. Aristotle's Biology .... 40
IV. Progress in Anatomy and Medi-
cine 84
V. The Final System: Galen . . 98
VI. The Linkage with the Modern
Time 124
Outline of Influence of Greek
Biology and Medicine . . . i39
Notes and Bibliography . . . 153
[X]
[xi]
PREFACE
<l
THE OBJECT of this little monograph
is to indicate the debt of the modern
world to the ancient biology and
medicine. One might as well say simply Greek
biology and medicine, since whether pursued
or practiced in Ionia, in Attica, or in Rome,
the biology and medicine worthy of our atten-
tion were Greek in their origin and progress,
and owed little to the Romans. The scientific
spirit was an endowment of Hellas, and alien
from the genius of Rome; nor did the Romans
capture much of it from the gifted race whom
they subdued politically, and by whose art and
literature they were captivated in turn.
The task before us might make the labor
of a lifetime for any writer, and the resulting
volume would inevitably lead the reader into
long winding avenues. I offer but a sketch, a
slight sketch as it were, of Greek biology and
medicine. I have endeavored to draw it in
such a way as to make clear the nature of their
influence upon our intellectual life today. So
[xiii]
PREFACE
we gain a useful point of view from which to
consider the pregnant thoughts and researches
of the Greeks regarding the nature of animals
and plants, and their wise practice of the heal-
ing art. We may profit by the spirit in
which they made their investigations and
applied a system of therapeutics, scientifically
based.
Our correlated modern sciences which are
called biological because they treat of living
organisms, have pushed their researches and
discoveries far beyond the achievements of the
Greeks. They are not a graft upon a Greek
stem: they have arisen through the direct
study of nature, not from the old Greek books.
Thus they have shown a Greek spirit. It is in
this modern renewal of a scientific mind, rather
than in any specific borrowings from the
ancient stock, that we should seek to recognize
what Greece has been and still may be for us.
So with medicine. The reign of Galen ended
some centuries ago. But modern medicine, in
spite of its vastly increased knowledge, has
never ceased to hark back, and often very con-
sciously, to the principles of Hippocrates.
With a larger knowledge than his own, it
rightly reverences the great Greek, and treads
[xiv]
PREFACE
Still in his footsteps. Therefore in considering
our debt to Greek medicine I shall look to the
HIppocratic method, rather than to specific
points of practice, referring to these more by
way of illustration.
I have to thank my friend. Dr. Frederic S.
Lee, Research Professor of Physiology in
Columbia University, for his valuable sugges-
tions upon reading my manuscript; also the
New York Academy of Medicine for the privi-
leges of its great medical library courteously
extended. My friend, Professor Heidel of
Wesleyan University has aided me throughout
my work with books and counsel, and has had
the kindness to read my proof and advise with
me regarding it. His eminence in the field of
Hippocratic studies and early Greek philoso-
phy is known to all scholars. The italics in the
text are due to Professor Hadzsits, one of the
Editors in this series, who is also responsible
for the " Outline, briefly showing the influence
of Greek Biology and Medicine," printed as
an Appendix to this volume.
Henry Osborn Taylor
New York,
October, 1922.
[XV]
f
4
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
I
GREEK BIOLOGY AND
MEDICINE
'f
I. THE EARLY BIOLOGY
BEYOND all other ancient people, the
better sort of men among the dwellers
in the Ionian cities on the west coast
01 Asia Minor and the neighboring islands were
blessed with lively intellectual curiosity. They
wer€ also free, and meant to keep their free-
dom. Their cities might for a time be brought
within the sway of a Lydian monarch or the
Great King of Persia; but such intermittent
pressure from without did not hamper the com-
merce of these coast and island towns, or re-
strict the free thinking of their citizens.
Religion was tolerant or uncertain; there was
no constraining caste of priests. Men might
think as they saw fit upon the origin and order
of the world, and freely express their opinions.
And it came to pass that the gifted thought-
leaders of Ionian Greece devised conceptions of
[3]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
the world, the impress of which has never been
expunged from human thinking.
The old Ionian speculation upon Nature or
(t>v(TLS was curious as to the material of the
world, and considered how its visible compo-
nent rocks and earth and waters came to be.
This speculation, supplemented by investiga-
tion, was directed also to the origins of plants
and animals, to the manner of their growth
and to their living structure. Accordingly,
the (t>vaLo\oyia^ which is to say the natural
history or philosophy, of these physicists, in-
cluded the beginnings of biology, which is the
science of all living things, if we use this com-
paratively modern word in its most compre-
hensive sense.
There is no need to re-state the physical
theories of the early Ionian philosophers and
of their compeers who were Greeks even when
not so evidently lonians. It is more to our
purpose to remark that for us Greek biology
begins in some extraordinary fragments
ascribed to the great Milesian Anaximander,
who was a younger friend of Thales and lived
through the first half of the sixth century be-
fore Christ. They are as follows:
" Living creatures arose from the moist ele-
[4]
THE EARLY BIOLOGY
ment as it was evaporated by the sun. Man
was like another animal, namely, a fish, in the
beginning.
" The first animals were produced in the
moisture, each enclosed in a prickly bark. As
they advanced in age, they came out upon the
drier part. When the bark broke off, they
survived for a short time.
*' Further, he says that originally man was
born from animals of another species. His
reason is that while other animals quickly find
food by themselves, man alone requires a
lengthy period of suckling. Hence, had he
been originally as he is now, he would never
have survived.
" He declares that at first human beings
arose in the inside of fishes, and after having
been reared like sharks, and become capable
of protecting themselves, they were finally cast
ashore and took to land." ^
We may puzzle ourselves and find much or
little in these syncopated fragments. They do
not disclose the manner of Anaximander's in-
vestigations, but represent his conclusions,
which were drawn from his study of nature.
They stand for his explanations of the visible
facts, his accounting for phenomena. This
[5]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
dawning biology, like the cosmological physics
of which it appears as part, was free from
superstitious fear; it admitted no magic, recog-
nized no supernatural; it had little religious
awe. Such unembarrassed observation of na-
ture, such free and rational conclusions, were
unique in the world; and unique the consequent
endeavor to build up a systematic body of nat-
ural knowledge, with accordant hypotheses, or
explanations, which should rationally account
for the world in which man lived. Even with
the Greeks these intellectual aims were not to
become common. And as such an observa-
tion of nature was then utterly unknown in
Babylonia or Egypt or anywhere else on earth,
so outside of the elect of the Greek race and a
very few others who imbibed their spirit, it was
never accepted by the ancient world.
And here at once be it said that, taking full
account of the admirable Greek achievements
in biology and medicine, our modern indebted-
ness is less for their substance than for the
clear spirit of scientific investigation which was
one of the immortal legacies of Greece, how-
ever few the men or periods that could accept
it. In medicine, in surgery, in every field of
science, modern investigation has advanced
[6]
THE EARLY BIOLOGY
very far beyond the Greeks. It has not, how-
ever, altogether improved upon their spirit,
although in practice it has brought the habit of
careful and toilsome verification which was not
theirs. Yet the methods of modern medicine
have ever and anon been fain to hark back to
the broad wisdom of Hippocrates; and as for
the genius and accomplishment of Aristotle in
biology, why, he will reappear as Harvey's god
and Darwin's admiration.^
After Anaximander, other natural philoso-
phers thought much upon the origin of plants
and animals. Biological considerations and
medical doctrines appear in the fragments of
the early philosophers and fill out the tradi-
tions of their lives, — with Anaxagoras, in his
recognition of the differences between living
organisms and inanimate objects, with Emped-
ocles, presumably an important figure in the
history of medicine, with Democritus, a dis-
sector and penetrating investigator, of whom
Aristotle said that no one had so profoundly
considered growth and change.
Can we discover a general purpose in their
investigations and reflections? Possibly, — by
a moderate use of constructive interpretation.
They were searching for the source and cause
[7]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
of living things: pondering upon the first in-
choate material of them, and the moving
influences of warmth and moisture; then con-
sidering the reasons and manner of their growth
and sustenance, noting the features of their
structure. In the Homeric Epics, the fortunes
and fatalities of men and beasts were fre-
quently determined by the arbitrary will and
action of the gods. Such a pantheon could
have no place in the minds of men searching
for a plastic source and for operative causes
which should be constant and regular, depend-
able and even predictable, in their action.
With these men '' the conception of Nature
replaced that of the gods as a basis of explana-
tion, </)6(rts was conceived as the source of the
manifold activities of the world." ^
These early philosophers, Pre-Socratics, as
they are called, had not analyzed causation
or distinguished one manner of cause from
another. That was left for Aristotle. They
had no distinct conception of final causes or
the purposeful adaptation of means to ends.
*' Lucky for them!" many of us moderns
might remark. Nevertheless, to them. Nature,
the source of things if one will, seemed to con-
tain the moving principles which issued in the
[8]
I
THE EARLY BIOLOGY
world of plants and animals, and ruled within
or over them. These initial and controlling
forces might be conceived as utterly mechan-
ical, as in the later Atomic theory of Democ-
ritus. Yet some of the early Greeks, observ-
ing the obvious conformity of means to ends, at
least in animals, could not rest in the thought
of Nature as merely mechanical and without
purpose in its operation. Besides, plants and
animals were alive, and life could not really
be explained in terms of weight and impetus.
Since Nature was the source and fashioner of
living beings, Nature itself, or herself, might
in the end be thought of as alive. The con-
crete, vital, form-and-life-giving character of
Greek thinking could hardly keep from vital-
izing its concept of the great source and
mother of living things. Heraclitus had already
said that *' Nature loves to hide," or " play at
hide-and-seek." When has she not been found
the cleverest of players at this game?
So the early and the later Greeks touched
delicately on the living vitality and possibly
vague personality of Nature. If divine. Nature
was pantheistically so, and never to be moulded
to the sharp personality of an Homeric Zeus
or Apollo or Athena.
[9]
.1
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
There exist but fragments of the Pre-Socrat-
ics, and Xenophon's Memoirs of Socrates
contain scant notice of biology or physics.
Recently it has been recognized that a mine
of suggestion, if not information, as to the
early Greek thoughts upon the working of
Nature in living organisms is to be found in
that large and most significant body of medi-
cal and even biological literature which trails
the authorship of Hippocrates. He was Soc-
rates' contemporary; and although it is diffi-
cult to prove his authorship of any one of these
treatises, a goodly part are from the fifth
century, when he lived, and are convincingly
associated with the great physician to whom
they are ascribed. Other portions of the
Hippocratic corpus are affected by the theories
of the natural philosophers, and reflect con-
temporary conceptions of Nature.
For example: " Hippocrates speaks of
Nature as arranging the vitals in the inner
parts; says of the auricles of the heart that
they are instruments by which she takes in the
air, adding that they seem to be the handiwork
of a good craftsman; refers to the vis medica-
trix naturae, Nature having discovered the
methods without understanding and untaught;
[10]
i \
THE EARLY BIOLOGY
she makes glands and hair; she (as the stu-
dent's natural aptitude or inaptitude) can
prepare the way for and offer resistance to in-
struction; she is all-sufficient; she produces
natural species and legislates language; in dis-
ease she may withhold signs, but may be con-
strained by art to yield them; the means em-
ployed by her are likened to the means in use
in the arts." *
One of the Hippocratic treatises, probably
dating from the close of the fifth century,
gives much zoological information, and even
suggests something like a classification of
animals and plants. Another, somewhat later
in date, discusses with great intelligence the
generation of animals and plants. It is a
worthy predecessor of Aristotle's works upon
these matters.^
M
["]
f \
4
n. THE HIPPOCRATICS
GREEK MEDICINE, with surgery,
was an art, the healing art, ia ptKrj
Texvrj. Through its ministrations
men and women, the highest order of living
beings, were healed of their wounds or, when
sick, restored to health. Such was medicine
in its broad Hippocratic foundations, which
consciously rested upon still more ancient
medical experience. But since the doctors
were thinking men and also Greeks, they
sought to know the causes of sickness; some
of them speculated on the nature of man and
invented hypotheses of disease. So medicine
inclined to theory, besides relying on the re-
sults of observation of the sick; it tended to
become a science as well as an art. Members
of the healing craft studied anatomy and
physiology (in the modern sense), which are
biological sciences. Indeed so far as medicine
became science as well as art, it falls within
the province of biology.
Greek medicine and natural philosophy or
[12]
THE HIPPOCRATICS
science were to progress and retrograde to-
gether. I refer to the true Greek medical
tradition; for there were quacks in Greece,
as there have been ever since; today people
still troop after them. But in speaking of our
debt to Greece in medicine, we have in mind
the broad currents of good practice and in-
creasing knowledge which flow full in the Hip-
pocratic writings, continue on through the great
physicians and anatomists of Alexandria, and
spread themselves abroad over the Roman
Empire until, six hundred years after Hippoc-
rates, they are brought together in the ample
system of Galen. It is convenient to proceed
chronologically in this little attempt to follow
the interrelations of Greek biology and
medicine.
The almost consciously schematic and in-
troductory tract On Ancient Medicine is
usually placed first in the Hippocratic writings.^
As its name implies, and its contents make
clear, it sets forth no novel system, but bases
its argument upon the experience and clinical
observation of generations. Like other writings
of the master, or his immediate school, it will
steer a safe course between a crude and hap-
hazard empiricism and distorting the teach-
[13]
)
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
ings of rationalized experience into agreement
with hypotheses touching the nature and dis-
eases of man or the things of heaven and
earth.
Thus the tract opens: "There are those
who have essayed to speak or write concerning
medicine, basing their argument on the hot or
cold, on the moist or the dry or anything else
they choose, reducing the causes of human dis-
eases and death to a minimum, one and the
same for all, basing their argument on one or
two [such causes] ; but in many of the novel-
ties they utter they are clearly in the wrong.
This is the more blameworthy, because they
err touching an actual art which all men em-
ploy in the greatest emergencies and in which
they honor most the skillful practitioners.
Now there are practitioners, some bad, some
excellent; which would not be true if medicine
were not actually an art, and no observations
or discoveries had been made in it. All would
be equally unskilled and ignorant of it, and
the cure of diseases would be wholly subject
to chance. As a matter of fact, it is not so;
but, as artisans in all other arts excel one the
other in handicraft and knowledge, so also in
medicine." Therefore I maintained that it had
[14]
THE HIPPOCRATICS
no need of vain hypotheses, as is the case in
matters inaccessible to sense and open to doubt.
Concerning these, if one essay to speak, one
must resort to hypothesis. So, if one should
speak and entertain an opinion touching things
in the heavens or under the earth, it would be
clear neither to the speaker nor to those who
heard him whether his opinion was true or
false; for there is no appeal to aught that can
establish the truth." ®
The tract proceeds to show that the art of
medicine has grown through observation of the
needs and diseases of men, — not through
the acceptance of some hypothesis as to their
cause.^ For example, the regulation of the
patient's diet, espjeclally in acute illness, was
fundamental in Hippocratic medicine. And the
tract argues that no improvement in diet, even
for people in health, could have come about
except through observation of the ill effects of
unsuitable food. Much more, then, has long
clinical experience shown the need to modify
the regimen of a patient suffering from a fever.
Indeed nothing has so promoted the art of
medicine as observing how the food for a
healthy man injures the sick, and the conse-
quent endeavor to regulate the patient's regi-
[15]
I
*¥%■■ '
1^'
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
men and discover the form and amount of
nourishment suitable to a constitution weak-
ened through disease.
The obvious fact that some forms of food
will make a well person sick tells against those
who imagine that disease is produced by an
excess of warmth or cold, of dryness or mois-
ture. " For if hot, or cold, or moist, or dry,
be that which proves injurious to man, and if
the person who would treat him properly must
apply cold to the hot, hot to the cold, moist to
the dry, and dry to the moist — then let a man
eat wheat raw from the threshing floor, and
raw meat, and drink water with it.'^ By using
such a diet I know that he will suffer severely;
for he will experience pains, his body will be-
come weak and his bowels deranged, and he
will not live long. What remedy then should
be provided him? Hot, or cold? or moist? or
dry? For, according to the hypothesis, it must
be one of these that is injuring the patient,
and must be removed by its contrary. But the
surest and most obvious way is to change his
diet, give bread instead of wheat, boiled flesh
in the place of raw, and a little wine." ^^
Having ridiculed and disproved such hypo-
theses in their application to medicine, the
[i6]
THE HIPPOCRATICS
writer passes on to question the usefulness of
other philosophic theories for the medical prac-
titioner: " Certain physicians and philosophers
assert that one cannot know medicine without
knowing what man is, how he originally came
into existence and of what substances he was
compounded in the beginning. . . . Now the
contention of these men really looks to phi-
losophy, as do Empedocles and others who
have written concerning nature (irepl ^vaeois).
As for me, I consider that what a philosopher
or physician has said or written of Nature has
less relevancy to medicine than to painting;
and I am of opinion that, so far as concerns
knowledge of Nature, one can know nothing
definite about it except from medicine; but
this may be thoroughly learned, when men go
about it rightly. Hitherto, it seems to me, we
are far from it: far, that is to say, from having
a scientific knowledge of what man is (that
is to say, what his constitution is) and to what
cause he owes his origin and the rest, in any
exact sense. Now so much at least it is indis-
pensable that the physician should know con-
cerning Nature and should greatly concern
himself to know, if he is to do any part of his
duty; to wit, what a man is (i.e. what his
[17]
i
f|
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i
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
constitution is), relative to meat and drink,
and what he is relative to the rest of his mode
of life, and what results follow for the indi-
vidual from particular things, and all this not
merely in general terms, as e.g., ' cheese is un-
wholesome food, for it distresses one who eats
plentifully of it'; but what particular distress
it causes, and for what reason, and to what in-
gredient of the man's constitution it is un-
suitable." ^-
The writer points to the physician's need to
consider this question closely. Each individual
is peculiarly constituted, and cheese will be
injurious or strengthening as it may or may
not suit his constitution. Here the writer
tacitly accepts the Hippocratic conception of
the four humors representing the four ele-
mental qualities of every human body: the
blood contains the warm-moist quality; yellow
bile, the warm-dry; black bile, the cold-dry;
and phlegm (formed in the brain), the cold-
moist. Although these humors do not exist
in the same proportions in every individual,
nevertheless each person's health depends upon
their due relations and blending, while an ab-
normal preponderance or accumulation of any
one of them produces disease. Though the
[i8]
THE HIPPOCRATICS
disturbance display itself only in one spot,
general symptoms of illness will follow. It is
food that furnishes the material from which
these humors, or cardinal fluids, renew them-
selves.
This conception of the humors and the
effects of their disturbance was the chief pillar
of the medical temple for the next two thou-
sand years, and became part of the current
speech of European peoples. Although not
universally accepted in Greek medicine, it
received the authoritative approval of Galen
and then of Avicenna, the Arabian physician
and philosopher of the eleventh century; and
no one stood out against them until the pro-
digious Paracelsus, than whom no man was ever
more vociferously dubbed quack and charlatan
by his own as well as later times.
Strictly taken, the theory of the four humors
was as baseless as Paracelsus said it was; yet
the conception of functional coordination
among the human organs and of the general
disturbance resulting from the sickness of any
one of them, has never been discarded. Hip-
pocrates viewed the body as a whole and had
observed that the sickness of a part m'ght dis-
order or sicken the rest. This might be under-
[19]
i
li
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
Stood by means of the four humors, which
seemed to Hippocrates the nearest explanation
of the observed phenomena.
Thus a certain amount of hypothesis entered
the Hippocratic healing art; — as it necessarily
makes part of every art as well as every science.
But Hippocrates at least economized in hy-
pothesis as few men after him, and very con-
sciously. For he was an acute Ionian Greek,
and the need to seek and formulate explana-
tions, that is, hypotheses, comes with great
urgency to every intelligent and inquiring mind.
Babylonians and Egyptians, who were prac-
tical, but not intellectually curious, were not
beset with any like cravings. And indeed the
history of Greek, as well as modern, medicine
will illustrate this competitive endeavor of the
intellectual mind to keep its explanations
abreast of observation; — indeed explanations,
hypotheses, in the endeavor to keep abreast,
to account for phenomena, save the appearances
(ac^^eLP Ttt (t>aiv6}j.eva, a Platonic phrase), will
constantly go beyond them, and so astray. All
progressive physical science, and medicine
striving ever to become a science, exhibit this
struggle of hypothesis to account for observa-
tion. And doubtless the more modest working
[20]
THE HIPPOCRATICS
hypotheses, which the true scientist or the good
physician holds himself in readiness to abandon,
are the most serviceable and least fatal.
We return to our illustrations of Hippoc-
rates. Very typical is the treatment of the
patient's regimen. Its method and humane
wisdom are shown in the tract On Regimen in
Acute Diseases. It opens somewhat warmly
in a polemic against the Cnidian school for
their fine-spun diagnoses and meticulous dis-
tinctions between diseases, which went beyond
their knowledge of the course and nature of
disease and far beyond their too restricted
remedies. Not every variation of symptom
means a different disease; and the Cnidians
fail to consider those profounder indications
of which the patient is not aware, but the
physician must discern and understand if he
would foresee the course and crisis of the sick-
ness with which he must cope. Diet is most
important in acute diseases, and has not been
sufficiently determined; its effect upon the sick
must be carefully considered and compared.
The tract proceeds to do this specifically and
most wisely; comparing, for instance, the re-
sults obtained from a diet of barley broth with
those from strained barley water, and discuss-
[21]
\
1
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
ing whether the patient should have been pre-
viously purged. Attention is to be paid to the
stages of the disease and the condition of the
patient, and regard should be had to his usual
habit of taking food, whether once a day or
twice (sic). The physician must be cautious
in changing the diet or increasing it when the
disease takes a favorable turn. Greek physi-
cians had constantly to treat pleurisies and
pneumonias and enteric fevers; and one may
question whether modern medical writing has
anything wiser to say as to diet in such cases
than this Hippocratic tract.
It is not my purpose to recount the details
of Hippocratic practice, but rather to illustrate
its principles, its penetrating observation, its
fine and broad intelligence, its humane wisdom.
Never was a practice so wise with'n the limita-
tions of the practitioner's knowledge: that in-
deed was very limited as to anatomy and
physiology, — while the resources of the
human constitution were better understood, as
were the effects of climate and food.
Hippocratic medicine recognized that dis-
eases resulted from natural causes, and should
be treated accordingly. This was a prodigious
stride toward the light. It is always the task
[22]
THE HIPPOCRATICS
of medicine to trace the true causes, as well
as the probable course, of a disease; and so
learn to prevent or, if not that, to control and
cure. Outside of Greece, as in Egypt or Baby-
lonia, physicians could not cease to be priests
or astrologers. There was surgery and some
medicine practiced in those lands; but the
practice could not quite disregard supposed
demoniacal causes of disease or detach itself
from the panacea of magic. These supersti-
tions were stumbling blocks before the advance
of medicine as a science or an art, progressing
through knowledge and skill drawn from ob-
servation and experience. Their complete elim-
ination first comes before us in the Hippo-
cratic writings. It was part of the Greek
freeing of the human spirit from foolish
anxieties and irrelevant considerations; a put-
ting things in their right places, — their right
categories, human and divine, natural and
supernatural, if the latter existed at all. In-
deed the superhuman and divine might be just
the other side, another aspect of the human
and material, — just as much part of the uni-
versal order and just as subject to law.
The classic Hippocratic argument for this
principle is in the tract On the Sacred Disease,
[23]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
epilepsy, which commonly was regarded as a
stroke or visitation of a god or demon. But,
says the writer, " it appears to me to be nowise
more divine nor more sacred than other dis-
eases, but has a natural cause from which it
originates like other affections. Men regard its
nature and cause as divine from ignorance and
wonder, because it is not at all like to other
diseases. And this notion of its divinity is kept
up by their inability to comprehend it, and the
simplicity of the mode by which it is treated,
for men are freed from it by purifications and
incantations. But if it is reckoned divine be-
cause it is wonderful, instead of one there are
many diseases which would be sacred; for, as
I will show, there are others no less wonderful
and prodigious, which nobody imagines to be
sacred. The quotidian, tertian and quartan
fevers seem to me no less sacred and divine in
their origin than this disease, though they are
not reckoned so wonderful. And I see men be-
come mad and demented from no manifest
cause. . . . They who first referred this disease
[epilepsy] to the gods, appear to me to have
been just such persons as the conjurers, purifi-
cators, mountebanks, and charlatans now are,
who give themselves out for being excessively
[24]
i
THE HIPPOCRATICS
religious, and as knowing more than other
people. Such persons, then, using the divinity
as a pretext and screen of their own inability to
afford any assistance, have given out that the
disease is sacred, adding suitable reasons for
this opinion; they have instituted a mode of
treatment which is safe for themselves, namely
by applying purifications and incantations, and
enforcing abstinence from baths and many
articles of food which are unwholesome to
sick men. . . ." ^^
After a statement of the causes of the dis-
ease within the human body or arising from
outer influences, the conclusion follows, that
" this disease called sacred comes from the
same causes as the others, from cold, from the
sun, or from changing winds. These are
divine; but they do not make this disease more
divine than others. All are human and divine
and each has its own nature and power."
So each disease has its own nature and can-
not arise without natural causes, — a beautiful
and enlightened view for which we have so
largely to thank Hippocrates.
The principle that disease and health are
due to natural causes is exemplified in the large
by the Hippocratic tract On Airs, Waters and
[25]
fm'-'ii
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
Places, which also illustrates the broad Hip-
pocratic view of the province of medicine. It
is the earliest essay known on the influence
of physical environment upon health, disease
and temperament. It holds that the intelligent
physician must understand the effects of the
situation or exposure of a city, of the varying
seasons and the different winds, the quality
of the water, the nature of the soil, and the
inhabitants. It treats of climate and the dis-
eases which prevail in certain localities from
their exposure to certain winds; of the kinds
of water and their effect upon the human body,
for example in the formation of urinary calculi.
The influence of the season is then set forth;
and finally the effect of climate and despotic
institutions in inducing the mild and unwarlike
dispositions of the peoples of Asia, whose
spirit is enslaved; while the mountainous and
well-watered lands of Europe, with their sharp
changes of season, have produced enterprising
and warlike, or even ferocious inhabitants.
Such is a scanty outline of this penetrating
presentation of matters which have been under
the sharpest discussion, and from so many
points of view, in the last hundred years.
Without agreeing with all the statements of
[26]
I
\
1
«^
THE HIPPOCRATICS
this great opening treatise, one will not fail to
admire its profound intelligence.
So Hippocrates saw the natural causes of
disease in such matters as unsuitable food or
evil indulgence, unhealthy occupations, climate
and the changing seasons. He had also ob-
served the effect of heredity and the strength
of individual constitutions on their proneness
to disease. The office of medicine, of all medi-
cal treatment, was to assist the natural re-
cuperative powers of the patient to throw off
the disease. This Hippocratic idea of nature's
vis medicatrix was hardly an hypothesis, so
open to observation was the tendency of
wounds to heal and of sick people to recover.
For treatment Hippocrates relied upon the
clinical observation of the course of acute dis-
ease and the significance of pathological
symptoms, recognized from the contrast ex-
hibited with the state of the body in health.
Symptoms had always local significance;
usually they indicated further physical dis-
turbance. Let a comprehensive and whole view
be taken of the case, with careful consideration
of every indication of the patient's condition
and chances of recovery. The symptoms were
considered generally as the phenomena of acute
[27]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
disease.^"* Viewed in this way they were more
knowable, their significance better understood,
than the finer distinctions between one disease
and another which admittedly outran the
knowledge of these practitioners. In practice
this generic knowledge was carefully adapted
to the particular case. The patient himself was
studied, his peculiar constitution taken account
of, and his symptoms were treated with refer-
ence to his condition. These physicians w^re
not tabulating diseases, they were set upon
meeting the exigencies of each case — trying
*' to do good to the patient, or at least not
harm him."
Accordingly, instead of finely distinguishing
diagnoses of the different diseases, Hippocrates
and his school worked out a general prognosis,
a detailed and comprehensive exposition of the
symptoms and course of acute disease, as ex-
emplified in pleurisy or pneumonia, and in
those various fevers so common in Greece.
This is the theme of the TvpoyvuiariKov or
Prognosis, one of the most authentic of the
Hippocratic writings: "He seems to me the
best physician who is able to know in advance "
the entire group of phenomena constituting the
disease, to wit, to divine its previous conduct,
[28]
THE HIPPOCRATICS
its present action, its future course. Thus he
will be able to supplement the patient's faulty
statements, gain his confidence, keep clear of
blame and be the better able to manage a cure
when that is possible.
In order that the physician may have such
knowledge, the Prognosis gives a close descrip-
tion of phenomena common to acute diseases:
describes the look of the countenance, the
patient's position in bed, the movements of his
hands, the respiration, sweats, the dropsies
which supervene, the sleep, the urine, faeces,
vomitings and sputa, — contrasting these phe-
nomena with those of the body in a state of
health. That his countenance be like that of a
person in health is the best of symptoms, while
the worst is that it should show a contrast in
every respect; to wit: "a sharp nose, hollow
eyes, collapsed temples; the ears cold, con-
tracted, and their lobes turned out; the skin
about the forehead being rough, distended and
parched; the color of the whole face being
green, black, livid, or lead colored." '' Unless
such a face can be at once accounted for by
some special reason, like want of food or sleep,
the patient will surely die.
This is the famous fades Hippocratica, the
[29]
,,*>.
1
11
I
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
most frequently translated and imitated de-
scription of a face of a dying man: " for his
nose was as sharp as a pen," says the Hostess
of the dying Falstaff.
Space fails me for the writer's description
of unfavorable signs from the patient's posi-
tion in bed, — as " lying upon his back, with
hands, neck, and legs extended," or his wishing
to sit erect at the climax of the disease, espe-
cially in pneumonia, or waving his hands be-
fore his face, or hunting as if gathering bits
of straw or picking the nap from the coverlet:
" for after I saw him fumble with the sheets,
and play with flowers, and smile upon his
fingers' ends, I knew there was but one way,"
stifl says the Hostess, who had not read
Hippocrates, but doubtless had seen old men
die before.
There is scarcely a statement in this writing
that has failed to leave its impress upon medi-
cine: witness, for example, the cult which has
surrounded its statement of the periodic crises
in acute disease. The writing closes substan-
tially with these words: " He who would know
correctly beforehand those that will recover,
and those that will die, and in what cases the
disease will be protracted or shortened, must
[30]
! J
THE HIPPOCRATICS
be able to judge from a thorough acquaintance
with all the symptoms and a comparison of
their weightiness, not omitting a consideration
of the season of the year, yet being sure that
at every season bad symptoms prognosticate
ill and favorable symptoms good. . . . You
should not complain because the name of any
disease may not be mentioned here, for you
may know all such as come to a crisis in
the above mentioned times by the same symp-
toms."
The Prognosis reflects the spirit and the
method of Hippocrates. Its refusal to follow
diagnoses into distinctions between diseases
which lay beyond any physician's knowl-
edge was part of this method and spirit; like-
wise its decision to abide by clinical experience
of acute disease and the significance of con-
stantly occurring symptoms. This safer knowl-
edge enabled the physician to foresee the
course of his patient's sickness, and if possible
conduct it to a cure. The salutary conception
of a sickness as a chain of phenomena, as a
whole, with a past, a present and a future,
would keep the physician's healing art from
crude empiricism and steady his practice
against haphazard remedies. The healing art
[31]
[I
I
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
of Hippocrates did not yet deem itself a
science; but it travelled in the light.
In concluding, mention must be made of the
Hippocratic book of Aphorisms, — for no
hand-book of medicine has ever been so
thumbed through many centuries, or trans-
lated into so many languages. Its statements
are pithy resumes for the guidance of the
practitioner, who could not fail to be the wiser
for conning them. Frequently they show
astonishing insight and extraordinary knowl-
edge. The first and most famous of them all
comes as a solemn admonition, — it certainly
has echoed down the ages: *0 jSios ISpaxvs, fj
de rexvn fJiaKprj, 6 de Katpos 6^6s, 17 de irelpa
(T<j>a\eprj, i) de Kplais xaXeTTi):^
" Life is short and the [healing] art is long;
the opportunity [to administer remedies] fleet-
ing, experiment is dangerous, the decision diffi-
cult," and it continues: "One must not only
do the the right thing oneself, but make the
patient and all about him concur." What is
said elsewhere might be added: " You must not
only do the proper thing, but do it at the right
time."
Such admonitions the young practitioner
might take to heart, — and tremble!
[32]
THE HIPPOCRATICS
The tone of this great aphorism ^^ is in accord
with Hippocrates' great and serious view of
medicine and the noble calling of the physician.
Futurity might well be grateful to him for the
high ethics of his vast authority. Sage hints
as to the physician's demeanor are given in
these works. Says the little piece which is
called Nomos, the Law or Canon: " Medicine
is of all the arts the most noble; but owing to
the ignorance of those who practice it ... it
is far behind the other arts. ... As the mute
figures on the stage have the shape, dress and
appearance of actors, and yet are not, so
physicians are many in title, but very few in
reality.
" Whoever is to acquire a competent knowl-
edge of medicine ought to have the following
advantages: a natural disposition; instruction;
a favorable position for the study; early
tuition; love of labor; leisure. First of all, a
natural talent is required, for when Nature
opposes, everything else is in vain; but when
Nature leads the way to what is most excellent,
instruction in the art takes place, which the
student must appropriate to himself by reflec-
tion, early becoming a pupil in a place well
adapted for instruction. He must also bring to
[33]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
the task a love of labor and perseverance, so
that the instruction, taking root, may bring
forth proper and abundant fruits. . . .
" Possessing all these requisites to the study
of medicine and having acquired a true knowl-
edge of it, we shall thus in traveling through
the cities, be esteemed physicians not in name
but in reality. But inexperience is a bad
treasure ... the nurse of timidity and audac-
ity. For timidity betrays want of powers, and
audacity a want of skill." ^^
Ethically the most influential document in
the history of medicine is the Hippocratic oath,
still administered to the young doctors of
Europe and America, though modified to suit
ways of instruction which do not keep to
the ancient paternal intimacy of teacher and
disciple.
" I swear by Apollo the physician, and
Aesculapius, and Health, and All-heal, and all
the gods and goddesses, that, according to my
ability and judgment, I will keep this Oath
and this stipulation : to reckon him who taught
me this Art equally dear to me as my parents,
to share my substance with him, and relieve
his necessities if required; to look upon his
offspring in the same footing as my own
[34]
THE HIPPOCRATICS
brothers, and to teach them this Art, if they
shall wish to learn it, without fee or stipula-
tion; and that by precept, lecture, and every
other mode of instruction, I will impart a
knowledge of the Art to my own sons, and
those of my teachers, and to disciples bound
by a stipulation and oath according to the law
of medicine, but to none others. I will follow
that system of regimen which, according to my
ability and judgment, I consider for the bene-
fit of my patients, and abstain from whatever
is deleterious and mischievous. I will give no
deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor sug-
gest any such counsel; and in Hke manner I
will not give to a woman a pessary to produce
abortion. With purity and with holiness I will
pass my life and practice my Art. I will not
cut persons laboring under the stone, but will
leave this to be done by men who are practi-
tioners of this work. Into whatever houses
I enter, I will go into them for the benefit of
the sick, and will abstain from every voluntary
act of mischief and corruption; and, further,
from the seduction of females or males, of
freemen and slaves. Whatever, in connection
with my professional practice or not in con-
nection with it, I see or hear, in the life of
[35]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
THE HIPPOCRATICS
men, which ought not to be spoken of abroad,
I will not divulge, as reckoning that all such
should be kept secret. While I continue to
keep this Oath unviolated, may it be granted to
me to enjoy life and the practice of the Art,
respected by all men, in all times! But should
I trespass and violate this Oath, may the re-
verse be my lot! " ^^
It is unnecessary to detail the scanty knowl-
edge of anatomy in the Hippocratic writings
or to dwell upon their ignorance of functional
physiology. To such knowledge the study of
the human body under dissection is essential,
and probably Hippocrates and his school did
not practice it. Yet they knew the positions
of the internal organs, and had a good knowl-
edge of the skeleton, of the joints and liga-
ments of the bones and the larger superficial
muscles. They knew enough to serve the needs
of their excellent surgery. Most efficient was
their treatment of fractures and dislocations.
The surgical treatises among the Hippocratic
writings — On Injuries of the Head, On Frac-
tures, On Dislocations — have evoked the
praise of surgeons in all times. Although they
had no special knowledge of antiseptics and
asepsis, they practiced scrupulous cleanliness
[36]
and understood the care of surgical patients.
The efficiency of Greek surgery shows that the
absence of certain specific knowledge and
consequent practices now deemed essential,
does not preclude wise and successful treat-
ment.^*
Among the Hippocratic qualities which de-
serve the gratitude of mankind, the first place
should be given to the spirit and method of this
great physician and his school, which stood
fast by observation and experience, guided and
systematized by large and consistent views of
the actual conduct of disease. August and
beneficent was the influence of this principle
and method through the following six hundred
years of Greek and Roman-Hellenistic medi-
cine, closing in the work of Galen. Advance
fifteen centuries further in the course of time
and chequered progress, and such great physi-
cians as Sydenham (162 4- 1689) and Boerhaave
( 1 668-1 738), wearied with conflicting and all-
unproven medical theories, will — like many
others who have been fain to do so even to our
own day — be found reaching back to the
method of Hippocrates.
Moreover, if the four humors have been
laughed out of court, the cognate principle of
[37]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
correlation among the human organs with the
consequent recognition of the general disorder
resulting from the sickness of any one of them,
is with us still. Likewise the fundamental
Hippocratic tenet of assisting nature to work
her own cure has remained valid and accepted,
in some form at least of re-expression to suit
the different and finally larger knowledge of
later times. No one disputes it today; and it
was doubly wise and sound for men whose
knowledge was as pardonably rudimentary as
that of Hippocrates. Charles Singer expresses
his judgment of the Hippocratics thus: ^^ The
work of these men may be summed up by say-
ing that without dissection, without any ex-
perimental physiology or pathology, and with-
out any instrumental aid, they pushed the
knowledge of the course and origin of disease
as far as it is conceivable that men in such
circumstances could push it. This was done as
a process of pure scientific induction. Their
surgery, though hardly based on anatomv, was
grounded on the most carefully recorded ex-
perience. In therapeutics they allowed them-
selves neither to be deceived by false hopes
nor led aside by vain traditions. Yet in diag-
nosis, prognosis, surgery and therapeutics
THE HIPPOCRATICS
alike they were in many departments unsur-
passed until the nineteenth century, and to
some of their methods we have reverted in the
twentieth. Persisting throughout the ages as a
more or less definite tradition, which attained
clearer form during and after the sixteenth
century, Hippocratic methods have formed the
basis of all departments of modern advance" ^^
[39]
I
III. ARISTOTLE'S BIOLOGY
OUR DEBT to Greek biology is not
to be appraised through any attempt
to trace a causal continuity between
Greece and the modern world in the develop-
ment of this science, or group of sciences. The
continuity is problematical -and lacking in
causality. Modern biological science sprang
from the direct investigation of the natural
objects forming its provinces. Modern an-
atomy for instance, arose with Leonardo and
Vesalius from dissections of human bodies and
not from study of books. It is not to be re-
garded as a graft upon the ancient stock.
The fundamental aim of biology, with the
Greeks and with ourselves, has been to learn
about living organisms. Nevertheless, Greek
biology differed from the modern biological
sciences in origins and associations, in method
and in temperament. Our present debt to the
ancient time is owing not a little to these dif-
ferences. Let us see.
In origins; — Greek science began in the
large unity of the grand desire to know the
[40]
Aristotle's biology
constituents and processes of the world. It
was pursued by men whom we have been taught
to call philosophers ; and in fact only gradually
did philosophy, more properly speaking, dif-
ferentiate itself from physics, that is, from the
elemental attempt to observe and know the
physical world. Greek philosophy was to con-
sist of logical and metaphysical conceptions;
Greek physical, or let us say specifically bio-
logical, science was to continue as observation
and induction. Yet it did not part company
from philosophy, and occasionally employed
the same processes of logic and even meta-
physics. The same men might still be both
scientists and philosophers — or metaphysi-
cians. The greatest of Greek biologists was
very nearly the greatest of Greek philosophers;
and Aristotle the biologist did not abjure the
logical and metaphysical reasonings of Aris-
totle the philosopher."^^
But modern biology, if we fix our eyes upon
its most fecund inceptions and vigorous growth,
was departmental or special from the begin-
ning, and alien from those sweeping explana-
tions and ultimate accountings which seemed
to constitute philosophy. In this sense, neither
Leonardo nor Vesalius nor Harvey was a phi-
[41]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
losopher; " and though Descartes, a great
philosopher, followed the investigations of
Harvey and dissected animals, his work along
these lines was unimportant.
The origins of Greek biology correspond
with its methods and its intellectual temper
and predilections. Assuredly it did observe,
and observed primarily, the objects or matters
which attracted Greek attention. Heraclitus
and Aristotle might bid men not to scorn to
notice humble, even disgusting, things. But
usually it was the objects which were most
noticeable and alive that caught the Greek
attention, like the quick and cunning animals
whose acts and natures might throw some light
upon man himself, in whom the Greek was
interested most of all. In accord, moreover,
with its origins, Greek biology sought for
broad and satisfying facts or truths, such as
appealed to the Greek reasoning mind. And
the Greek mind, like the Greek hand, was a
little impatient of drudgery. It was predis-
posed to accept data which satisfied its love of
order and symmetry and reason and its desire
to find these qualities in nature. Hence it
failed to make experiments and cautiously to
verify what it observed or desired to observe.
[42]
]
Aristotle's biology
Greek biology presents penetrating descrip-
tions which often are close and correct. The
descriptions were such as yielded explanations.
The wky was always lurking, or pressing un-
concealed behind the how, and even instigating
it. The wish for explanation is the antecedent
in all science ; — in Greek biology it might
color the description. So the description, like
the wished-for explanation, was a little over-
likely to accord with the insistencies of the
Greek mind. But so penetrating was the in-
sight of that mind, and so mighty its impulse
toward an explanatory ordering of things, that
the lesson and example of its accomplishment
have not ceased to be the inspiration of the
intellectual world. This is as true of Greek
science as of Greek philosophy with which
it was so closely related.
The beginnings of Greek biology were
noticed before, in speaking of the Hippocratic
school of medicine. Its matured character can
best be illustrated from the works of its
mightiest exponent, Aristotle. His three great
biological treatises, or compendia, or perhaps
note-books, may be drawn on — the Historia
Animalium, the De Partibus Animalium, and
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the De Generatione Animalium ; ""^ then more
briefly, the Enquiry Into Plants of his pupil
Theophrastus.^*
Aristotle's prodigious legacy of biological,
or let us say zoological, knowledge has often
been commented on, criticized, and appraised;
his extraordinary insight and grasp of veritable,
frequently intricate and difficult facts have
been made clear and the errors (however
arising) in his writings exposed. Usually one
can tell when his knowledge is derived from
the reports of other men, and when he has
gained it from his own observation of animals,
and especially from the many dissections which
he must have performed. That he dissected
whatever animals he could lay hands on is
proved by his knowledge of their parts; but
he rarely refers to his dissections -' any more
than to the method and manner of his re-
searches generally. It is results or conclusions
that are given in these writings, whether by
Aristotle himself or some pupil.''
From the first the reader is im.pressed with
Aristotle's comprehensive desire to order and
classify the objects of his study. He would
distinguish the parts of animals and arrange
the animals themselves by genera and species,
[44]
1
ARISTOTLE^S BIOLOGY
constantly seeking an order of progression
corresponding to the excellence and amplitude
of the equipment of each group of animals.
The opening description, or division, of the
parts of animals is so reduced to its simplest
terms, and therefore so abstract that effort is
needed to perceive its significance.
^' Of the parts of animals some are simple:
to wit, all such as divide into parts uniform
with themselves, as flesh into flesh; others are
composite, such as divide into parts not uni-
form with themselves, as, for instance, the
hand does not divide into hands nor the face
into faces." This distinction held good in
Aristotle's time as now; -" but the depth of its
validity has been plumbed only through modern
microscopic study of cells and tissues.
So in regard to the classification of animals
by genera and species which may be drawn
from his writings. Altogether Aristotle refers
to about five hundred and forty animals of all
kinds, including insects; and yet modern
zoology, recognizing more nearly one million
species, largely preserves his classification.
The attribute of soul or life and the degree
and kinds of its efficient presence are with
Aristotle the criterion of excellence in living
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GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
organisms: by the possession of a soul or an
organic life with nutritive faculty, a plant is
superior to a stone; by the possession of a soul
or an organic life, with sensitive, appetitive and
motor faculties (besides the nutritive), an
animal is superior to a plant; and by the addi-
tion of the intellectual faculty in his soul or
organic life, man is supreme among animals.
As another and concomitant test of excel-
lence, Aristotle took the amount of vital heat
which the animal possessed. " The more per-
fect are those which are hotter in their nature
and have more moisture and are not earthy in
their composition, and the measure of natural
heat is the lung when it has blood in it, for
generally those animals which have a lung
are hotter than those which have it not and in
the former class again those whose lung is not
spongy nor solid nor containing only a little
blood, but soft and full of blood." ''
These tests of excellence might be difficult
to apply to the classification of animals into
genera and species,— a yearning for vhich wHh
a realization of its practical and lo^fical diffi-
culties, pervades Aristotle's biolosjical treatises,
as already said. It will be interesting to feel
our way along his various avenues of approach
[46]
1
Aristotle's biology
to this many-sided problem, proceeding very
tentatively with a suspicion that after all we
may be following not his mental processes, but
our own.
Undoubtedly a comprehensive examination
of living organisms (animals rather than plants
are in Aristotle's mind) must embrace the
processes of formation of each animal, as well
as of its characters when formed. He bids us
remember that abstractions cannot form the
subject of a natural science, and individual
animals are the real existences, and not the
genera formed by the mind. It is with indi-
viduals that we have to deal, when trying to
study their formation and characteristics and
even when trying to form groups of genera and
species. Thus he insists upon the concrete
as the real object of study; yet he groups and
classifies and seeks ever the general qualities
in these concrete existences — even as he did
in his famous theory of tragedy, in the Poetics,
— and one should not draw back from the
humblest details provided they lead us on and
disclose the great design. Therefore:
" Having already treated of the celestial
world, as far as our conjectures could reach,
we proceed to treat of animals, without omit-
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GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
ting to the best of our ability any member of
the kingdom, however ignoble. For if some
have no graces to charm the sense, yet even
these, by disclosing to intellectual perception
the artistic spirit that designed them, give im-
mense pleasure to all who can trace links of
causation, and are inclined to philosophy. . . .
We therefore must not recoil with childish
aversion from the examination of the humbler
animals. Every realm of nature is marvellous
... so we should venture on the study of every
kind of animal without distaste; for each and
all will reveal to us something natural aj^
something beautiful. Absence of the haphazard
and conduciveness of everything to an end are
to be found in Nature's works in the highest
degree, and the resultant end of her gen-
erations and combinations is a form of the
beautiful.
" If any person thinks the examination of
the rest of the animal kingdom an unworthy
task, he must hold in like dis-esteem the study
of man. For no one can look at the primordia
of the human frame — blood, flesh, bones,
vessels, and the like — without much repug-
nance. Moreover, when any one of the parts
or structures, be it which it may, is under dis-
[48]
1),
1
Aristotle's biology
cussion, it must not be supposed that it is its
material composition to which attention is
being directed or which is the object of the
discussion, but the relation of such part to the
total form. Similarly, the true object of archi-
tecture is not bricks, mortar, or timber, but the
house; and so the principal object of natural
philosophy is not the material elements, but
their composition, and the totality of the
form, independently of which they have no
existence." ^^
So the concrete part or element, or possibly
vhe individual animal, presents small intellec- '
tual interest by itself, but only as it contributes •
to the whole and exhibits the beautiful design.
Aristotle examines individuals to discover their
common attributes; for his real interest leaps
to the group. And so he continues immediately
after the last words quoted from him: "The
course of exposition must be first to state the
attributes common to whole groups of animals,
and then to attempt to give their explanation."
That is to say, we have first to describe the
phenomena presented by each group, and
afterwards state the causes of those phenomena
and deal with their coming into existence.
There is law and purpose behind the forma-
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GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
tion of every animal and every part of an
animal, since everything that nature makes is
a means to an end, and nature does nothing
in vain. " It is evident that there must be
something or other really existing, correspond-
ing to what we call by the name of Nature.
For a given germ does not give rise to any
chance living being, nor spring from any
chance one; but each germ springs from a
definite parent and gives rise to a definite
progeny. And thus it is the germ that is the
ruling influence and fabricator of the off-
spring." ^°")
The classification of living beings should
take account, it would seem, both of their char-
acteristics and of the processes by which they
and their characteristics came into existence.
In either case nature herself makes no break,
admits no gap, in the whole scale of animate
and inanimate being: " Nature proceeds little
by little from things lifeless to animal life in
such a way that it is impossible to determine
the exact line of demarcation, nor on which
side thereof an intermediate form should be.
Thus, next after lifeless things in the upward
scale comes the plant, and of plants one will
differ from another as to its amount of apparent
[50]
I
Aristotle's biology
vitality; and in a word, the whole genus of
plants, whilst it is devoid of life as compared
with an animal, is endowed with life as com-
pared with other corporeal entities. Indeed, as
we first remarked, there is observed in plants a
continuous scale of ascent towards the animal.
So in the sea, there are certain objects concern-
ing which one would be at a loss to determine
whether they be animal or vegetable. For in-
stance, certain of these objects [e.g. sponges]
are fairly rooted, and in several cases perish
if detached. . . . Indeed, broadly speaking, the
entire genus of testaceans has a resemblance to
vegetables, if they be contrasted with such
animals as are capable of progression.
" In regard to sensibility, some animals give
no indication whatsoever of it, whilst others
indicate it but indistinctly. Further, the sub-
stance of some of these intermediate creatures
is fleshlike . . . but the sponge is in every
respect like a vegetable. And so throughout
the entire animal scale there is a graduated
differentiation in amount of vitality and in
capacity for motion.
" A similar statement holds good with regard
to habits of life. Thus of plants that spring
from seed the one function seems to be the
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GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
reproduction of their own particular species,
and the sphere of action with certain animals
is similarly limited. The faculty of reproduc-
tion, then, is common to all alike. If sensibility
be superadded, then their lives will differ from
one another in respect to sexual intercourse
through the varying amount of pleasure de-
rived therefrom, and also in regard to modes
of parturition and the ways of rearing their
young. Some animals, like plants, simply
procreate their own species at different seasons;
other animals busy themselves also in pro-
curing food for their young, and after they are
reared quit them and have no further dealings
with them; other animals are more intelligent
and endowed with memory, and they live with
their offspring for a longer period and on a more
social footing.
" The life of animals, then, may be divided
into two acts, — procreation and feeding; for
on these two acts all their interests and life
concentrate. Their food depends chiefly on
the substance of which they are severally con-
stituted; for the source of their growth in all
cases will be this substance. And whatever
is in conformity with nature is pleasant, and
all animals pursue pleasure in keeping with
their nature." ^^
[52]
'
Aristotle's biology
These famous passages may be taken as
indicating Aristotle's view of the graded order-
ing of life, with reference to the phenomena
exhibited by living beings after they are
formed. The processes of their generation
were likewise graded in accordance with the
nature of the animal. This graded change in it
the manner of generation, more than any other
fact, seems to have determined Aristotle's
classification of animals.
Doubtless a similarity in obvious organic
structure led men to recognize the larger
natural divisions, like birds and fishes. Such
generic likenesses, with due account taken of
evident as well as more subtle differences,
might be followed in forming conceptions of
subordinate groups. But to the mind searching
for criterions of identity or distinction, nothing
is more taking than the ways in which animals
reproduce their kind. So felt this profound
student of life. Perhaps no other man has ever
discovered so many interesting facts touching
the production of the young within and without
the womb. Of course he stood but at the ^
threshold of embryology. He had no micro-
scope. The myriad facts v/hich the studies of
the last two centuries have elicited were un-
[53]
4
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
known to him for the most part — but not
altogether, since now and then the modern
investigator '' discovers " what Aristotle knew.
Yet whole provinces of the considerations of
modern biology scarcely touched him. All the
more marvellous were the forward thrusts of
his mind toward what the distant future should
make clear. One of those thrustings forward
was the classification of animals, which may
be drawn from his writings.
His fundamental division was into animals
with blood and animals without, that is to say,
those who have no true blood but a different
fluid performing a like nutritive function.
This division coincides with the modern one
— into vertebrates and invertebrates, ascribed to
Lamarck (i 744-1829). Through the constit-
uent groups under both divisions will be found
a series of gradations in foetal development
within the parent's body; and these determine^f
the Aristotelian group formation. *^
Man, the Cetacea, viviparous quadrupeds,
birds, reptiles, fishes, bony and then cartilag-
inous, come within the division of animals
with blood. Aristotle had no conception of the
mammalian ovum, and consequently regarded
the embryo of mammals as born alive within
[54]
ARISTOTLE'S BIOLOGY
the womb, and as living in a fuller sense (or
with more kinds of life) than could be ascribed
to an egg. In the three lower orders of blooded
animals, the young developed from an egg;
hence these were essentially oviparous, although
the egg might hatch within the mother and
the young come forth alive, as is the case of
certain sharks. Such animals were externally
viviparous, yet the young began as an egg
and not as a living foetus.
In the grounds of this classification there
was fundamental error, arising from Aristotle's
ignorance of the mammalian tgg^ and yet much
penetrating observation, the results of which
still hold. His work upon the chick of the
domestic fowl, and his extraordinary anticipa-
tory description of the gestation of certain
sharks are examples. In his method of close
continuous study of the chick developing with-
in the egg, he may have been preceded by the
writer of one of the Hippocratic tracts. ^^
^' Generation from the egg proceeds in an
identical manner with all birds, but the full
periods from conception to birth differ. . . .
With the common hen, after three days and
three nights, there is the first indication of the
embryo ... the heart appears like a speck of
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GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
blood in the white of the egg. This point
beats and moves as though endowed with life,
and from it two vein-ducis with blood in them
trend in a convoluted course ; and a membrane
carrying bloody fibres now envelops the yolk,
leading off from the vein-ducts. A little after-
wards the body is differentiated, at first very
small and white. The head is clearly distin-
guished, and in it the eyes, swollen out to a
great extent. . . ." ^^
Without carrying further our citation on the
chick, we may remark that Aristotle saw all
that can be seen without a microscope. His
description of the gestation of the placental
sharks makes too difficult a matter for a lay-
man to set forth for other laymen. I will
borrow the account given by an Aristotelian
scholar who is himself a biologist.
'' There is perhaps no chapter in the His-
toria Animalium more attractive to the anato-
mist than one which deals with the anatomy
and mode of reproduction of the cartilaginous
fishes, the sharks and rays, a chapter which
moved to admiration that prince of anatomists,
Johannes Miiller. The latter wrote a volume
[Ueber den glatten Hat des Aristoteles, Berlin,
1842] on the text of a page of Aristotle, a page
[56]
Aristotle's biology
packed full of a multitude of facts, in no one
of which did Johannes Muller discover a flaw.
The subject is technical, but the gist of the
matter is this: that among the Selachians (as,
after Aristotle, we still sometimes call them)
there are many diversities in the structure of
the parts in question, and several distinct
modes in which the young are brought forth
and matured. For in many kinds an egg is
laid, which eggs, by the way, Aristotle de-
scribes with great minuteness. Other kinds
do not lay eggs, but bring forth their young
alive, and these include the Torpedo and
numerous sharks or dogfish. The egg-shell is
in these cases very thin, and breaks before the
birth of the young. But among them there are
a couple of sharks, of which one species was
within Aristotle's reach, where a very curious
thing happens. Through the delicate mem-
brane, which is all that is left of the egg-shell,
the great yolk-sac of the embryo becomes con-
nected with the parental tissues, which infold
and interweave with it; and by means of this
temporary union the blood of the parent be-
comes the medium of nourishment for the
young. And the whole arrangement is physio-
logically identical with what obtains in the
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GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
higher animals, the mammals, or warm-blooded
vivipara. It is true that the yolk-sac is not
identical with that other embryonic membrane
which comes in the mammals to discharge the
function of which I speak; but Aristotle was
aware of the difference, and distinguishes the
two membranes with truth and accuracy.
" It happens that of the particular genus of
sharks to which this one belongs, there are
two species differing by almost imperceptible
characters; but it is in one only of the two,
the yaXeos Xeios of Aristotle, that this singu-
lar phenomenon of the placenta vitellina is
found. It is found in the great blue shark
of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean; but
this creature grows to a very large size before
it breeds, and such great specimens are not
likely to have come under Aristotle's hands.
Cuvier (i 769-1832) detected the phenomenon
in the blue shark, but paid little attention to it,
and, for all his knowledge of Aristotle, did
not perceive that he was dealing with an im-
portant fact which the Philosopher had studied
and explained. In the seventeenth century,
the anatomist Steno (1638-86) actually re-
discovered the phenomenon, in the 7aXc6s
Xetos, the Mustelus laevis itself, but he was
[58]
^
Aristotle's biology
unacquainted with Aristotle. And the very
fact was again forgotten until Johannes Muller
brought it to light, and showed not only how
complete was Aristotle's account, but how wide
must have been his survey of this class of
fishes to enable him to record this peculiarity
in its relation to their many differences of
structure and reproductive habit." '*
Turning from animals with blood to the
bloodless animals, Aristotle continues his
attempt to guide himself by the descending
methods of reproduction, which correspond
with the lowering degrees of life and vital
function in these inferior but still marvellously
interesting creatures. Passing downwards
through those Crustacea which he finds gener-
ated from an imperfect ovum, he enters the
realm of insects. These spring from the
scolex or grub, which is metamorphosed, pass-
ing through the chrysalis or pupa, into the
perfect insect. ^^ Lowest in the scale are
molluscs and finally the zoophytes (sponges,
Coelenterates) which are produced from
generative slime or by spontaneous gen-
eration. The last idea, of course, has been
abandoned.
Instead of giving the further details of
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GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
Aristotle's orders of animals, I quote the criti-
cal resume of a recent authority:
"The classification of birds is to this day
in an unstable state. We may say that Aris-
totle's grouping is substantially that which pre-
vailed in scientific works till recent times and
still remains as the popular division. His
separation of the cartilaginous from the bony
fishes, on the other hand, still stands in scien-
tific works, and is a stroke of genius which
must have been reached by means of careful
dissection. . . .
" For the Anaima [bloodless] or Inverte-
brates even modern systems of classification
are but tentative. There is an enormous num-
ber of species, and after centuries of research
naturalists still find vast gaps even in the field
of mere naked-eye observation. Nevertheless,
with the instinct of genius, and with only
some 240 of these forms on which to work,
Aristotle has fastened on some of the most
salient points. Especially brilliant is his treat-
ment of the Molluscs. There can be no doubt
that he dissected the bodies and carefully
watched the habits of octopuses and squids,
Malacia as he calls them. He separates them
too far from the other Molluscs grouped by
[60]
Aristotle's biology
him as Ostracoderma, but his actual descrip-
tions of the structure of the Cephalopods are
exceedingly remarkable. His distinctions be-
tween the Malacostraca or Crustacea, Entoma,
Sponges, and Jellyfish are also still of value,
and these divisions remain along much the
same lines as he left them." ^«
In reading through the biological treatises
of Aristotle, one realizes that they are the
pioneerings of a mighty mind. He was laying
out the multitudinous matter, striving, not
indeed to introduce an order not its own into
the chaos of Nature, but rather to apprehend
and describe and know the reason of the intri-
cate and marvelous order which was embodied
in Nature's realm. That Nature held such
order, and presented it and worked ever with
purpose in fulfilling it, was Aristotle's scien-
tific and philosophic faith. If Anaxagoras or
another had this faith before him, he was to
render it explicit through a more adequate
analysis, a keener discrimination, and a mar-
shalling of detail hitherto unattempted. He
was a universal pioneer in nature's vast realm:
an investigating and dissecting pioneer, press-
ing on through all the seeming mazes of the
unexplored jungle, insistent upon laying out
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GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
or rather discovering the paths of Nature's
ordering. Thus he was a pioneer of natural
science. But the intellectual needs of the
philosopher drove him to another and more
ultimate kind of pioneering. He must think
the matter out, and find the logical, even the
metaphysical basis of justification of his
apprehension of Nature's processes: he must
adjust his knowledge of Nature to the demands
of his thought and possibly constrain it to the
categories of his metaphysics.'' Let us follow
him, for a little, here.
Aristotle proceeds to attack the basic how
and why of living things. His treatment of
these organisms — that is, his biology — did
not call for a discussion of the world's material,
but merely its adaptability to nature's pur-
poses. But his treatment did demand a dis-
criminating conception of causation in order
to understand how plants and animals came
to be what they were. Although his analysis
of the four kinds of causes is familiar, we may
note the application made of it in his biology.
"There are four causes underlying every-
thing: first, the final cause, that for the sake
of which a thing exists; secondly, the formal
cause, the definition of its essence (and these
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Aristotle's biology
two we may regard pretty much as one and
the same); thirdly, the material; and fourthly,
the moving principle or efficient cause." ^^
" Now that with which the ancient writers,
who first philosophized about nature, busied
themselves, was the material principle and the
material cause. They inquired what this is,
and what its character; how the universe is
generated out of it, and by what motor in-
fluence, whether, for instance, by antagonism
or friendship, whether by intelligence or spon-
taneous action,^^ — the substratum of matter
being assumed to have certain inseparable
properties; fire, for instance, to have a hot
nature, earth, a cold one; the former to be
light, the latter heavy. For even the genesis
of the universe is thus explained by them.
After a like fashion they deal with the develop-
ment of plants and of animals. They say, for
instance, that the water contained in the body
causes by its currents the formation of the
stomach and the other receptacles of food or of
excretion; and that the breath by its passage
breaks open the outlets of the nostrils; air and
water being the materials of which bodies are
made; for all represent nature as composed of
such or similar substances.
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GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
" But if men and animals and their several
parts are natural phenomena, then the natural
philosopher must take into consideration not
merely the ultimate substances of which they
are made, but also flesh, bone, blood, and all
the other homogeneous parts; not only these,
but also the heterogeneous parts, such as face,
hand, foot; and must examine how each of
these comes to be what it is, and in virtue of
what force. For to say what are the ultimate
substances out of which an animal is formed
... is no more sufficient that would be a similar
account in the case of a couch or the like.
For we should not be content to say that the
couch was made of bronze or wood, but should
try to describe its design or mode of composi-
tion in preference to material; or, if we deal
with the material, it would at any rate be with
the concretion of material and form. For a
couch is such and such a form embodied in
this or that matter, or such and such matter
with this or that form; so that its shape and
structure must be included in our description.
For the formal nature is of greater importance
than the material nature."
Aristotle then shows, on the other hand,
that shape and color do not make the essence
[64]
Aristotle's biology
of an animal or its parts: a dead body is not
a man, nor a bronze hand a hand, nor the eye
in a dead body really an eye. Rather, to de-
scribe an animal, one must show what it
actually is in substance as well as form; and
so with its several organs. He then argues
that it is the soul or life which constitutes the
essential nature of the animal. For " nature
is spoken of in two senses, and the nature of a
thing is either its matter or its essence; nature
as essence including both the motor cause and
the final cause. Now it is in the latter of
these two senses that either the whole soul
or some part of it constitutes the nature of an
animal."
Nature always seeks an end, — a famous
Aristotelian statement; and the end is the final
cause, which in the case of animals is the soul
or the life of the animal, the full functioning
of its nature. Logically, that is, in thought,
this final cause or end is prior to the motor
cause; " For this is the Reason, and the Reason
forms the starting point, alike in the works
of art and in works of nature." With a builder
the final cause is the construction of a house;
in nature it is the making of an animal. " In
the works of nature the good end and the final
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GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
cause is still more dominant than in works
of art." So it constitutes the nature of the
animal or the nature of an organ more than
the material of its body or the necessary pro-
cesses of its growth or natural formation do.^*^
[Yet] " in order of time, the material and the
generative process must necessarily be an-
terior to the being that is generated; but in
logical order the definitive character and form
of each being precedes the material."
" But Nature flies from the infinite," says
Aristotle in consonance with his Greek tem-
perament, and, thinking of the literally un-
ending confusion that would result if parents
did not produce offspring of the same kind with
themselves, he says: "for the infinite is un-
ending or imperfect, and Nature ever seeks
an end." *^
So universal Nature, or Nature in the large,
and so the nature of the individual animal.
As for the natural philosopher, he would be
but a crude teleologist, with but a crude notion
of the working of final cause, that is, of plan
and purposeful utility, did he not find this
plan and use in every detail of the animal
structure. Since the soul, or life, or the full
living functioning is the end or object of each
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Aristotle's biology
individual animal, it must direct and mould
the growth and character of every part.
Aristotle holds this creed, and devotes the De
Partibus Animalium to its special illustration.
First he shows it generally in regard to the
animal's component parts. The homogeneous
fluids and tissues exist for the sake of the more
especially active parts or organs,^^ like the eye
or hand. They must possess the different
properties, like fluidity, softness, or hardness,
required by the organ, and of which it will
present a combination. " For the hand . . .
requires one property to enable it to effect
pressure, and another and different property
for simple prehension. For this reason the
active or executive parts of the body are com-
pounded out of bones, sinews, flesh and the like,
but not these latter out of the former." And
the relations between these two orders of
parts are determined by a final cause,*^ which
is the life of the whole animal.
Aristotle will not flinch from the principle
that this final end, the life of the whole animal,
calls every part into being. It is irrational
to hold the reverse, i.e., that the character or
mechanical power of a part produces or de-
termines that final end which is the life or
[67]
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.1
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
soul with its distinguishing properties. The
motor or efficient cause must be subordinate to
the final cause, and never the reverse.
To illustrate by a famous instance: " Stand-
ing thus erect, man has no need of legs in
front, and in their stead has been endowed by
nature with arms and hands. Now it is the
opinion of Anaxagoras that the possession of
these hands is the cause of man being of all
animals the most intelligent. But it is more
rational to suppose that his endowment with
hands is the consequence rather than the
cause of his superior intelligence. For the
hands are instruments or organs, and the in-
variable plan of nature in distributing the
organs is to give each to such animal as can
make use of it; nature acting in this matter as
any prudent man would do. . . . We must con-
clude that man does not owe his superior in-
telligence to his hands, but his hands to his
superior intelligence." ^*
Modern biology finds other factors entering
this problem, which is part of a large contro-
versy still. Our biologists might not decide
for Aristotle here, yet would be well disposed
toward another deduction which he drew from
his teleological creed: aberrant or occasional
[68]
ARISTOTLE'S BIOLOGY
characters, not common to the species, are not
due to a final cause; that is to say, they are
not useful or conducive to the end which is the
life of the animal.
" For whenever things are not the product
of Nature working upon the animal kingdom
as a whole, nor yet characteristic of each
separate kind, then none of these things is such
as it is or is so developed for any final cause.
The eye, for instance, exists for a final cause,
but it is not blue for a final cause unless this
condition be characteristic of the kind of
animal."
In other words, when a character is common
to all animals of an established group, then it
exists for a purpose ; but fluctuating characters
are not so developed. Such characters have
" no connection with the essence of the animal's
being, but we must refer the causes to the
material and the motive principle or efficient
cause, on the view that these things come into
being by necessity." Apparently Aristotle
means that the formal or final cause cannot
always control the material and the efficient
causes, and variations from the perfect type
arise.
45
Every animal with its essential or constant
[69]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
parts, is fashioned by its final cause through a
process of generation. Even when mature, it
is not a static being, but still a vital process,
living its life, its full life which it had not
attained as an embryo. The embryo has the
nutritive soul or life, but not the sensitive
and motor soul which comes at birth, and still
less the rational soul which comes to man
alone.
" For nobody w^ould put down the unfertil-
ized embryo as soulless or in every sense bereft
of life (since both the semen and the embryo
of an animal have every bit as much life as a
plant). . . . That then they possess the nutri-
tive soul is plain. ... As they develop, they
also acquire the sensitive soul, in virtue of
which an animal is an animal. ... An animal
does not become at the same time an animal
and a man and a horse or any other particular
animal. For the end is developed last, and the
peculiar character of the species is the end of
the generation of each individual." *^ This
passage states a fundamental principle of em-
bryology, that the general characters belong-
ing to the class or genus are first displayed by
the embryo, and afterwards the distinguishing
characters of the species to which it belongs,
[70]
I)
47
!/
Aristotle's biology
So the embryo has not all the characters of the f*
species from the beginning, nor does it possess
its full endowment of soul or life, but develops '
gradually. Its development continues after
birth, — the child exhibiting a larger propor-
tion of generic animal qualities, and a less
proportion of those distinctly human:
" In the great majority of animals there are
traces of psychical qualities or attitudes, which
qualities are more markedly differentiated in
the case of human beings. For just as we
pointed out resemblances in physical organs, so
in a number of animals we observe gentleness
or fierceness, courage or timidity, fear or confi-
dence, high spirit or low cunning, and with
regard to intelligence, something equivalent to
sagacity. Some of these qualities in man, as
compared with the corresponding qualities in
animals, differ only quantitatively. . . . [This]
will be more clearly apprehended if we regard
the phenomena of childhood; for in children
may be observed the traces and seeds of what
will one day be settled psychological habits,
though psychologically a child hardly differs
for the time being from an animal; so that
one is quite justified in saying that, as regards
man and animals, certain psychical qualities
[71]
i
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
are identical with one another, whilst others
resemble, and others are analogous to each
other." ''
It was evident to Aristotle that the nutritive
and motor life or soul could not exist without
the body: '' Plainly those principles whose
activity is bodily cannot exist without a body,
e.g., walking cannot exist without feet. For
the same reason they cannot enter from out-
side " But the final problem, — " a ques-
tion of the greatest difficulty," says Aristotle,
— is: " When and how and whence is a share
in reason acquired by those animals that partic-
ipate in this principle? " His answer is, that,
unlike the nutritive and motor life, the reason,
the rational soul, alone enters from without and
" alone is divine, for no bodily activity has any
connexion with the activity of reason."
Modern biological psychology might not
agree. Yet Aristotle's psychology was biolog-
ical through and through. The soul with him
was life; and life in its plant and animal
activity was in and of the body and insepa-
rable from it, save that only reason, the h'gher
mind of man, was not of the body, but was
divine. We still ask, what is divine? What
is the body? What is reason?
[72]
Aristotle's biology
To return for a moment to some Aristo-
telian opinions bearing on the generation of
life and its transmission of attributes to off-
spring. He combated pangenesis, the theory
that the semen must come from the whole
body, in order to account for the inheritance
of S3 many diverge individual resemblances.^^
He was aware that bodily imperfections in-
cidentally acquired would not be inherited, like
congenital traits. Yet he realized the con-
stitutional effects arising from the alteration
of a small part or organ: that if animals " be
subjected to a modification in minute organs,
they are liable to immense modifications in
their general configuration," — a phenome-
non noticeable with gelded animals.^^ Hip-
pocrates had shown how often trouble with one
organ worked a general disturbance of the
system. Aristotle recognized also that the
habits of animals are connected with their main
functions of '' breeding and the rearing of
young, or with procuring a due supply of food;
and these habits are modified so as to suit cold
and heat and the variations of the season." "
He has much to say of migration and hiber-
nation.
In ancient natural science the manner of
[73]
-^
V
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
approach, and more assuredly the phraseology,
may be strange to us, and at first sight seem
to represent exceedingly fantastic views. But
on deeper consideration, remembering our own
actual confusion of thought as to the nature
of life and the powers or qualities through
which living organisms are alive, sometimes we
see that, if we will but change the ancient
phrases a little, we shall not find the under-
lying thought as alien as it seemed. State the
ancient hypotheses a little differently, give
them a slight push, see them from another
angle, and they will often parallel modern
conceptions, themselves admittedly unattached
to basic considerations, and therefore, perhaps,
insecurely founded. This reflection applies to
many of the Hippocratic concepts, to many a
view of Aristotle and, as we may hereafter
see, to the genially eclectic system of Galen.
One must not make an evolutionist of Aris-
totle. But if the world of plants and animals
was not for him an evolution of species in the
modern sense, he recognized most pregnantly
its graded continuity. This unbroken grada-
tion pervaded the process of embryonic growth,
as well as the completed structure of mature
organs. Still more subtly it followed the in-
[74]
[
Aristotle's biology
crements of soul or life, possessed by each
organism next higher in the universal series.
Organic nature presented an ascending scale.
If this organic world was not an evolution
strictly speaking, it was not static. It was
alive, in vital process, pressing on toward self-
fulfillment through the purposeful power of
nature. Each animal was formed and con-
ducted to its end by the soul or life which was
its purpose and design, its final cause. In like
manner each organ was adapted to its function.
The plastic power of serviceableness, of utility
and use, the formation and existence of all
parts as means to ends, with Nature ever work-
ing toward an end and doing nothing vainly, —
these convictions were launched by the great
Stagyrite upon the mighty roles they were to
play in all the subsequent thinking of man-
kind. For " barren virgins," final causes were
to have a large progeny!
The principles of Aristotle are not dead.
Changed scarcely in form, conceptions of the
vital power of Nature have ever filled the
minds of men and still live in the minds of
those men of science for whom mechanics and
chemistry cannot explain the world of life.
Specific teleological explanations of function
[75]
/
h
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
are easily overthrown; and such, generically,
may be doomed. Yet life remains, very form-
ative, apparently still purposeful, still tending
toward self-fulfillment. The vital principle is
utterly wonderful and elusive, a will-o'-the-
wisp, and yet assuredly there. Anatomists,
physiologists, biologists, even physicists, are
not quite without it. Some among them crave
such an explanatory principle " to save the
phenomena! " Though it lead into swamps
of mysticism, people will not give it up and be
satisfied with mechanics and chemistry. The
fact of life is the prime organic reality: it is
still utterly wonderful and elusive, and yet
assuredly there. While biology today works
largely with mechanical and chemical data,
and uses mechanistic and chemical hypotheses,
the majority of biologists recognize that such
data and such principles do not afford a suffi-
cient explanation or description of living
organisms.
Seeing that chemical and mechanistic for-
mulae give no real picture of the organism,
many biologists still think that no real picture
of it can be reached through such channels
exclusively. There is still much Aristote-
lianism in modern physiology. As Aristotle
[76]
Aristotle's biology
held that the material and moving causes yield
no adequate conception of the organism, so
biology today incLnes to hold that no adequate
description of the living organism can be
framed in categories of " matter " and
" energy."
Phrases change; and thinking takes a new
direction from the new phrase and seems to
flow in untried channels. The old phrase be-
comes an alien. Few of us today could bring
oui selves to accept eo nomine the \pvrjxy — ^^^
soul or, if one will, the organic life in its
ascending scale, — as the entelechy, to wit,
" the form or actuality of a natural body
having in it the capacity of life." More
specifically, the \pyi'n is the " first entelechy,"
or actuality, standing as knowledge stands to
the exercise of knowledge in speculation.
This " soul " is the formative principle of the
body and the body's end or final cause, even
as speculative activity ( to Becjpelv ) is the
soul's final end.
Such statements are not of our time. Yet
perhaps they are not so far from our intel-
lectual purposes. Do we not think that all the
sciences, including those having to do with
organisms, contribute to the soul which is life,
[77]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
and indeed the highest life which is of the
mind? This is the Aristotelian view, and one
properly belonging to a man who saw life
whole and realized the splendor of its mani-
festations, beyond the fields of science, in art
and literature, in tragedy and epic poetry/
The " end " of the body is the human person-
ality made up not only of its intellectual
strainings, but of its nobler impulses and more
sublime emotions, the sense of holiness and
beauty and other unanalyzable things of
human experience.
And as for the example of Aristotle, though
he be prone to leap to principles from insuffi-
cient grounds, and though his methods were not
those of modern scientific verification, s^ill
the largeness and penetration of h?s views, his
constant envisaging of each detail as part of a
greater living whole, his insistence ui)nn the
ultimate bearings of each fact, all this still
has at least some echo of inspiration even for
a time when the vast complexity of research
forces most scholars, as well as scientists, into
a sort of rodent specialism. Before him no
one had so grandly and so profoundly seen the
organism as a whole and as a coordination of
parts, and few men since his time.
[781
Aristotle's biology
Aristotle's work on Plants is not extant. To
judge from the passages touching this subject,
which are scattered through his other works,"
his botanical observations were less penetrat-
ing than his zoological. Yet it is not well to
judge him from these fragments, when his
main work is lost. We pass at once to the
writings of his but slightly younger disciple,
Theophrastus.
The latter's Enquiry Into Plants''^ is the
great classical botany, and is more clearly
written and better put together than his De
Causis Plant arum.''* No more than Aristotle
himself, is Theophrastus to be taken as the first
botanist. Much thought had already been de-
voted to plant life and to the medical properties
of plants, for instance, by the Hippocratic
school. His work is far from primitive, yet
the author still wanders in a maze, since he
has not reached a satisfactory or, so to speak,
" natural " system of classification. Here
Greek botany remained behind Greek zoology,
and one may say at once that the Enquiry Into
Plants has by no means the philosophical
interest of Aristotle's works on zoology, nor
is it as suggestive or useful for the modern stu-
dent. Indeed, the view of at least one able
[79]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
historian of botany would seem to be that the
botanical ideas of both master and pupil had
not an altogether favorable effect upon the
progress made by that science, say, from
the sixteenth century onwards.'^
Theophrastus would not have been the pupil
of his master had he not been impressed with
the luring analogies and even continuities ob-
served by Aristotle, between the vegetable and
animal kingdoms. In fact these observed —
or ill-observed — resemblances or analogies
not infrequently led him astray, whatever
bread± of view they gave him.
For example: "The primary and most
important parts, which are also common to
most [plants], are these, root, stem, branch,
twig; these are the parts into which we might
divide the plant, regarding them as members,
corresponding to the members of animals; for
each of these is distinct in character from the
rest, and together they make up the whole." ^®
He saw, however, that '' we must not assume
that in all respects there is complete cor-
respondence between plants and animals. And
that is why the number also of parts is inde-
terminate; for a plant has the power of growth
in all its parts, inasmuch as it has life in all its
[80]
Aristotle's biology
parts; wherefore we should regard them not
for what they are but for what they are about
to be." "
Theophrastus realizes the intricate com-
plexity of his subject and that a true classifi-
cation of plants is beyond him: " In fact your
plant is a thing various and manifold, and so
it is difficult to describe in general terms; in
proof whereof we have the fact that we can-
not here seize on any universal character which
is common to all, as a mouth and a stomach are
common to all animals. . . . For not all plants
have root, stem, branch, twig, leaf, flower or
fruit, or again bark, core, fibres, or veins; for
instance, fungi and truffles; and yet these and
such like characters belong to a plant's essen-
tial nature. However . . . these characters be-
long especially to trees, and our classification
of characters belongs more particularly to
these; and it is right to make these the stand-
ard, in treating of the others." ^®
With other ancient writers Theophrastus was
much intrigued by conceptions of differ-
ences of sex between plants. He did not
understand the sexual parts of flowers. With
reference to palms, he comes nearest to an idea
of the process of fertilization, knowing of long-
[81]
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GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
established practices in their cultivation. He
says that the " male " and the " female " have
been distinguished with all trees, '' the latter
being fruit-bearing, the former barren in some
kinds." ''
" With dates, it is helpful to bring the male
to the female; for it is the male which causes
the fruit to persist and ripen. . . . The process
is thus performed: when the male palm is in
flower, they at once cut off the spathe on which
the flower is, just as it is, and shake the bloom
with the flower and the dust over the fruit of
the female, and, if this is done to it, it retains
the fruit and does not shed it." ®°
Without following Theophrastus further, I
will borrow a summary of his botanical achieve-
ments, or rather of his position, from one more
competent than myself:
" I. He distinguished the external organs
of plants, naming them in regular sequence
from root to fruit, and attained in many cases
to a really philosophical distinction.
"2. He definitely set forth the leaf ho-
mology of the perianth members of flowers but
attained to no real knowledge of their sexual
nature.
"3. He established the first rudiments of a
botanical nomenclature.
[82]
iii
Aristotle's biology
" 4. He watched the development of seeds
and was able to some extent to distinguish be-
tween dicotyledons and monocotyledons.
"5. He established a relationship between
structure and habits, and approaches the con-
ception of geographical distribution.
" 6. He saw the need for a general classifi-
cation of plants and made some attempt at a
system, though he failed to produce one which
was in fact workable.
" 7. He perceived a general relation be-
tween structure and junction in plants, and
thus laid the basis of scientific botanyj
>f 61
[83]
IV. PROGRESS IN ANATOMY AND
MEDICINE
IT IS by an easy transition that we turn
from biology to medicine, from pure
science inspired by the sheer desire to
know and account for living organisms, to the
healing art, which may be also scientific,
though led by practical beneficent intent.
The transition is the easier because we are in
the later fourth and the third centuries before
Christ, the most brilliant scientific age of
Greece, though Aristotle lived no longer.
Medicine in the Alexandrian school, led by
Herophilus and Erasistratus, was supported by
the now veritable sciences of anatomy and
physiology.
And of their works only scattered fragments
have survived! Admirable as these men were,
we must remember that we are not engaged
upon a history of Greek medicine or biology,
but are thinking of the value to the moderns
of what the Greeks accomplished. Therefore
we must occupy ourselves chiefly with those
[84]
i
PROGRESS IN ANATOMY
works which have survived, as the direct
vehicles of the ancient heritage; and such,
above all, are the works of the Hippocratics,
of Aristotle and of Galen. Hence we pass by
many men, brave and good, with but slight
mention. Our present task is to trace the
currents of medicine and its supporting sciences
through the later Greek and best Roman
periods till they are gathered up into the en-
cyclopaedic system of Galen in the latter part
of the second century after Christ.^^
In the third century before Christ, Alex-
andria presented such facilities and incentives
for study and investigation as had never be-
fore been brought together. The first Ptolemies
formed a great library covering all subjects
of study, and established zoological parks and
botanical gardens. Their munificence enabled
scholars and men of science to pursue their,
studies; and mathematics, astronomy and
physics flourished, as well as history, philology,
and poetry. There were hospitals for the treat-
ment and observation of diseases, and for per-
haps a century human bodies were methodi-
cally dissected. Possibly the Egyptian custom
of opening the body for embalming had dis-
pelled the Greek aversion to mutilation of the
[8s]
§
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
dead. But dissection of human bodies appears
to have been stopped before the close of the
second century before Christ, though the dis-
section of dead and living animals continued.
Herophilus and Erasistratus belong to the
Alexandrian period, though only the former
is known to have worked in Alexandria. They
were born about the year three hundred. The
reputation of Herophilus has come down to us
less assaulted than that of Erasistratus, whom
Galen hated for his alleged mechanical view of
the action of the human organs.
Herophilus was at all events the more
deferential in his treatment of Hippocrates,
and this was to be the test of orthodoxy in the
Greco-Roman medical tradition. He did not
dispute the conception of the four humors, but
preferred to think of four faculties as moving
the human organism, to wit, the nourishing fac-
ulty of the liver and digestive oreans, the warm-
ing power of the heart, the thinkins; faculty
of the brain, and the perceptive faculty of the
nerves. Above all, this man relied upon
clinical observation and the results of his dis-
sections. He appears to have been the first to
have worked through the entire human
anatomy. He discerned the connection be-
[86]
I
I
I
PROGRESS IN ANATOMY
tween the brain and spinal cord and the nerves
which proceeded from these centres; also the
connection of the digestive system with the
lacteals; and by the aid of the clepsydra he
made a study of pulse variations as a gauge of
the patient's condition. Realizing the dangers'
of medical theory, he fell back upon the sound
clinical methods of Hippocrates; and like the
master, avoided the finely drawn distinctions
of unproved diagnoses. His own further ex-
perience and his greater knowledge of anatomy
were brought to bear upon his treatment of
diseases, while he also made improvements in
surgery and obstetrics. A great and admi-
rable figure this Herophilus.
Less conservative and Hippocratic was
Erasistratus (also a great practitioner), who
would have nothing to do with the four humors
or four anything. Believing that a general
knowledge of the human body and its function-
ing in health was not necessarily of practical
use to the physician, he tended to specialize in
his own anatomical researches, which were,
however, brilliant in result. He gave a better
description of the liver and its gall ducts, and
for the first time gave a correct description of
the heart. He advanced the knowledge of the
[87]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
brain, and the distinctions between vessels and
nerves, and divided the motor from the sensory
nerves, — an immortal achievement. His
autopsies extended the knowledge of patho-
logical conditions of the internal organs.
Mechanical views prevailed in his physi-
ology, in which Nature's horror vacui played
a leading role. For him, the body, com-
pounded of atoms, was vivified by warmth
from without: his physiology felt the need
of some explanatory principle like oxygen.
The source of organic energy was two-fold, the
blood propelled through the veins, and the
pneuma " which is the energy carrier and dom-
inates all vital phenomena. Renovation of
the pneuma is brought about through respira-
tion, whereby air penetrates into the left side
of the heart through the pulmonary vein. Thus
two varieties of pneuma result, of which one
(the vital pneuma) is propelled into the
arteries, its function being to regulate vegeta-
tive processes throughout the body; whilst the
other (soul-pneuma) has the brain as its goal,
whence it effects movement and sensation by
way of the nervous system" (Neuburger,
p. 182). One sees that Erasistratus was kept
from recognizing the circulation of the blood
[88]
f
I
PROGRESS IN ANATOMY
only by the persistent ancient error that the
arteries carried, not blood, but air.
He conceived illness as resulting from the
loading of the parts of the organism with in-
sufficiently digested food-matter; which pre-
vented the organism from functioning. This
made a condition of '' plethora," from which
resulted the various sicknesses. Thus he re-
garded fever (which he did not consider in
itself a special disease, but a symptom) as re-
sulting from a stoppage of the circulation of
the pneuma in the large arteries, due to the
intrusion of blood from overloaded veins. He
sought to remove the " plethora " as the cause
of the disease; but did not concern himself
in practice with the remoter causes of the
plethora itself. Thus his diagnosis was local
and special, — " Cnidian " indeed, — and did
not follow the larger and far-reaching lines of
the Hippocratic prognosis.
It may be supposed that the therapeutic
principles of Erasistratus did not lead practi-
tioners to apply the growing knowledge of
anatomy to the cure of disease. The applica-
tion was too baffling. Yet the rivalry between
his school and that of Herophilus brought the
practice of medicine to its zenith in the years
[89]
1
I
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
immediately following the death of the two
masters. Soon, however, tendencies to simplify
principles and practice intervened ; and practi-
tioners were ready enough to disburden them-
selves of useless knowledge.
Either through legitimate descent or from
reaction, divergent medical attitudes became
apparent. One must not, however, infer such
opposite practices as the opposing names of
these medical sects might seem to indicate, for
they had much in common and tended to ex-
emplify Greek temperance and reasonableness
in the treatment of patients. Whatever was
the theoretical position of his school, " there
were for the wiser Greek physician three
factors of safety: he was free from magic; he
was a master of hygiene; and, whatever his
abstract notions, he never forgot to treat the
individual.^' (Allbutt.)
Naturally the various phases of Greek
medical theory were colored, temperamentally,
by the current attitudes of Greek philosophy
toward nature and human life and man's knowl-
edge of the same. So completely had Greek
natural philosophy boxed the compass of pos-
sible opinion, that no medical theory could
avoid adopting as its ultimate base some recog-
[90]
4
PROGRESS IN ANATOMY
nized philosophic view of the constitution of
the world and of man, its denizen; for instance,
the atomism of Democritus or some other
philosopher's opinions as to the psyche or
pneuma.
There was a school of regular sceptics in
Alexandrian times, and scepticism regarding
philosophic or scientific knowledge was fre-
quent beyond their company. Many physi-
cians were inclined to be sceptical of any
medical theory. This inclination promoted em-
piricism and electicism in medicine. There
arose a definite school of so-called Empirics, a
name of their own choosing. Although reject-
ing theories as to the nature of disease, they
were not casual experimenters with likely or
foolish remedies. But there had been enough
school-talk and argument; cures did not lie in
such discussion. The practitioner's efficacy
was to be gained from his own observations and
even experiments, made with due consideration
of the clinical experience recorded by others.
If the case was novel, the analogies of not too
dissimilar cases might apply. There were good
surgeons among these Empirics, who were
adding their own experience to the general
store.
[91]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
In the last pre-Christian centuries Greek
medicine reached Rome. The native Roman
practice had been of the homeliest, and accom-
panied always with a dose of superstition. For
our purpose it is quite negligible. But some
of the Latins, in medicine as well as literature,
were capable of learning. Such a one was the
exceedingly intelligent Celsus who, m the first
half of the first Christian century, composed
or translated an admirable hand-book of medi-
cine and surgery. Whatever the sources of his
materials were, he was a man of sense and dis-
crimination, and wrote a Latin that assured his
book an enthusiastic reception with the Hu-
manists when it was re-discovered in the
fifteenth century. It was printed at Florence
in the year 1478, before the works of either
Galen or Hippocrates.
Celsus knew the history of medicine, and m
his Introduction aptly describes the sects of his
time He speaks of the Empirics, who would
have nothing to do with the remote and hidden
causes of disease, seeing that men always had
differed regarding them; only the obvjous
causes were to be considered and treated. The
Empirics were interested in the cure rather
than in the cause. Opposed to them were those
[92]
PROGRESS IN ANATOMY
more dogmatic doctors who were not happy
unless they could understand the ratio of men's
bodies and of their disturbances. They pro-
fessed a rational medicine and held it neces-
sary to understand the antecedent and obscure,
as well as the palpable, causes of the disease,
and insisted upon a knowledge of anatomy.
In their opinion those who best knew the con-
stitution of the body and the causes of disease
had the best chance to effect a cure. Ex-
perience was important, but must always be
approached through the ratio of things.
Then Celsus speaks of those who adhered
to the methodum, the simple but sufficient way,
which was in fine a rather Roman simplifi-
cation of Greek theory, especially of the atomic
theory and its application to the constitution
and diseases of the human body. In general
— and the Methodists preferred generaliza-
tions to the specific knowledge which was more
difficult — diseases are due to a condition of
undue tension or rigidity in the body, or on
the other hand to excessive relaxation. In the
first case, the pores between the atoms are
clogged, and in the second they are too loose
and open. The theory was elastic and the
treatment reasonable, consisting in warm baths
[93]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
and other relaxing or invigorating measures as
the case seemed to require.
Expressing his own opinion, Celsus decides
for a middle course, whereby medicine should
rely upon experience rationally: let one treat
the evident causes of the disease, and as for the
remote, meditate on them. Students should
learn anatomy from the bodies of the dead and
from study of living and wounded men. The
surgical portions of Celsus's handbook are
particularly good.
Theories sat rather lightly on these excellent
practitioners of the Greco-Roman time, who
might call themselves by one name or another.
This remark applies to members of the so-
called '' Pneumatic " School, who were gen-
erally eclectic, adopting the best features of
medical practice in the second half of the first
century. They were affected by the Stoic
physics, in which borrowed materials filled out
a system novel in form. Accepting the old
working elements, they found the life-giving
principle to be the " Pneuma/' like unto air
and breath. It is innate, yet constantly re-
newed through breathing, and circulates with
the blood through the arteries and veins to all
parts of the body, — the arteries conveying
[94]
PROGRESS IN ANATOMY
more pneumaj and the veins more blood.
Pneuma vivifies the body, and makes it a
living unity, carries on the energies of growth
and reproduction, as well as of sensation, de-
sire, and thought. The normal condition and
proper tovos or tension of the pneuma means
health, and this is indicated by the pulse;
while sickness springs from disorder of the
pneuma, due to irregularities of the warm and
cold or dry and moist elements, and the conse-
quent morbid excess of one or the other of the
humors.
While these " Pneumatics " rejected the
fundamental theory of the Methodists, they
availed themselves of their treatment of dis-
ease, and drew upon all the best medical
knowledge of the time. They were wise
physicians, following many a precept of Hip-
pocrates, and efficient surgeons. One among
them, Archigenes, a contemporary of Trajan,
seems to have been extraordinarily resourceful
and inventive: "what we need is to be fertile
in expedients not to be always attending to the
writings of other people," said he.
Says Sir Clifford Allbutt: "The ancient
Greeks shrank from mutilation; and amputa-
tion, mentioned by the Hippocratean physi-
[95]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
dans only in gangrene as a subsidiary aid,
seems, even in Alexandria, to have made no
great progress; for Celsus also regarded it as
a last sad resource in gangrene: yet by the
time of Trajan, under Archigenes, amputation
had become a recognized procedure for ulcers,
growths, injuries and even deformities. The
limb to be removed was bandaged to expel
the blood, and a tourniquet was placed above
the line of severance; or sometimes the chief
blood-vessels were first cut down and tied, and
the smaller tied or twisted, during the opera-
tion — ^ transfixing them with a sharp hook
and twisting them round and round and clos-
ing them by this twisting ' — a proceeding of
which there is no trace in Hippocrates, nor
apparently in the earlier Alexandria. These
good methods were afterwards obliterated by
the bad fashion of the searing-iron." ^^
From the side of philosophy as well as
physiology, it is interesting to note how the
Pneumatic School represents a stage in the
mind's search for a vital principle to account
for the living man, and more specifically to
account for the animal heat, which is a clearly
vital quality, and yet indicative of ill when-
ever it rises above a certain degree, as in
[96]
I
PROGRESS IN ANATOMY
fevers, or whenever it falls below, as at the
approach of death. From Homer downward,
the breath of man suggested itself as the vital
principle or its vehicle. How about its re-
lation to the body's heat? This perplexing
question brought great confusion.^' Air seems
both hot and cold; and any one can blow hot
or cold with the same mouth. Was the vital
and necessary breathing of the air, in and
out, a cooling or a warming of the body?
Opinions wavered and contradicted each other
for centuries. Apparently — the whole matter
is exceedingly obscure — the early physicists
with Hippocrates were ranged on the side of
warming, and Aristotle with his great influence
on the cooling side. Nearly two thousand
years later, Harvey remained perplexed.
After his death, the search was carried on more
vigorously for some needed and explanatory
process analogous to the burning of combust-
ible things, in fine, for a process of combustion.
The goal was reached through the discovery of
oxygen and the slow-won knowledge of its
functions in the human economy.
[97]
I
V. THE FINAL SYSTEM: G.\LEN
GALEN represents the final catholic
and systematic interpretation of
Greek medicine and its relation to
the sciences of which it was or might make
part. He was more than a great eclectic, for
his work was a constructive synthesis, with
elements added which were the result of his
own observations and experiments.
Like other men he was fashioned and driven
by his education, into which entered the in-
tellectual past of himself and his contem-
poraries. But, unlike any other of his time,
his genius was so universal that he was im-
pelled and aided throughout his whole career
by the entire intellectual past, rather than by
one or more of its component interests or
typical tendencies.
The sciences which might be related to
medicine met in him, with some branches of
discipline with which physicians trouble them-
selves no longer. From his education and
\ still more through his talents and temperament,
[98]
THE FINAL SYSTEM: GALEN
he was a logician and a rhetorician, a master
of speech and composition. He was instructed
in all branches of natural philosophy or science.
A physicist in his ultimate considerations of
the constituents of the human organism as a
part of Nature, he was far more actively a
biologist in his investigation of the same. His
writings show medicine as part of biology.
And indeed his treatment of medicine as the
centre of a larger whole indicates the Greek
unity of science, a unity afterwards to be lost,
but today gradually reviving in the thought of
those who see that the formal barriers between
the sciences are vicious obstructions.
Hippocrates regarded medicine as the heal-
ing art. Although in fact he proceeded scien-
tifically, following the method of observation
and induction, and necessarily making use of
working hypotheses, nevertheless as far as
possible he set himself against theory. He
refused to base medical practice upon theories
as to the constitution of the world and man,
and protested against permitting such to divert
the practitioner from the teaching of his ex-
perience. The rival school of Cnidus may
have tried to be more scientific, in the sense
of seeking to conform their practice to basic
[99]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
hypotheses concerning man and his diseases.
It was not without its lasting influence; one
may perhaps regard Erasistratus as its final
great descendant. But, fortunately, the Hip-
pocratic principles triumphed at the time^ and
appear to have remained dominant during
those earlier periods when occupation with
theory would have warped and checked the
progress of the healing art.
Between the time of Hippocrates and the
year 130 a.d., when Galen saw the light, well-
nigh six centuries had passed. Long and well-
husbanded experience had improved medicine
and surgery. The knowledge of the human
body had been greatly added to, and the passing
theories as to the nature and causes of disease
had not seriously obstructed a continuous im-
provement in the treatment of disease and
bodily injuries. Rather, one may think that
the rivalry of the different schools, composed
of the nominal adherents of different theories,
had prevented dogmatism and narrowness in
practice.
Galen flourished in the second half of the
second century a.d., dying in the year 201.
Greek or Greco-Roman faculties of observation
were becoming less vigorous and the atmos-
[ 100]
THE FINAL SYSTEM: GALEN
phere of religion and religious philosophy,
which belonged to the dawning of a different
era, was already tending to becloud man's
vision of the natural world. Further advance
in exact science could not be expected, nor was
medicine likely to gain much more from the
clear and undeflected observation of its practi-
tioners. Its ancient course was well-nigh run.
Magnificently was it to be concluded in the
achievements of Galen's genius. He was born
at Pergamus in Asia Minor. An intelligent
father took care that he received the best edu-
cation that the town afforded in grammar and
rhetoric, as well as mathematics, natural
knowledge and philosophy. One may assume
that the varied stores of ancient philosophy
and knowledge had been rifled by this prodi-
gious learner, when at the age of seventeen
he decided to devote himself to medicine.
Pergamus afforded good masters and opportu-
nities for practice, especially in its widely
sought Asclepieion, where patients were treated
skillfully, and sometimes cured by miracle.
Galen's readiness to recognize miracles was
rather significant of the time and ominously
prophetic.
Having drained the opportunities of Per-
[lOl]
f
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
gamus, he set out to extend his knowledge at
the chief seats of medical learning — at
Smyrna, at Corinth, and above all at Alex-
andria. After nine years he returned a
finished physician, already noted for his skill
and his authorship of anatomical and physiolog-
ical treatises. Again he left his native town,
this time for Rome, where he won fame and
enmity alike, and the patronage of the great.
Perhaps his enemies drove him thence, or the
plague may have hastened his departure for
the east: not an heroic soul was this extraor-
dinary Galen. Emperors called him back,
Lucius Verus and Marcus Aurelius; he came,
yet would not accompany the latter on his
campaign against the Marcomanni, but under-
took the care of the young Commodus, at
Rome, — not an absorbing business. The last
thirty years of his life were devoted to medical
research and authorship; — authorship in-
deed! he had composed some four hundred
treatises when he died.
Galen was no condenser! His universal
learning, his ready memory, the quick ranging
of his mind, his exhaustless powers of argu-
ment, his facile rhetoric, conceit of himself,
love of belittling others, all piled up the monu-
[ 102 ]
I)
THE FINAL SYSTEM! GALEN
ment of his redundant compositions; yet such
was his skill and genius that the monstrous bulk
of his writings was not for long to obscure the
significance of their contents. After Aristotle,
he was perhaps the greatest of the ancient
systematizers of natural knowledge. His cen-
tral endeavor was to make medicine into
a systematic science; and, for good or ill,
truth and error, he appears to have accom-
plished it.
Medical practice and physical theory must
be made into a consistent unity. To this end
Galen sought to base the healing art upon a
knowledge of disease and its causes, and to set
his pathology upon the anatomy and physi-
ology of the human organism in health. This
more fundamental knowledge came through
observation under the guidance of philosophy,
logic and mathematics. Himself a mathema-
tician, he tried to apply the proofs of Euclid
to the results of observation and experiment.
He would have the a priori certitudes of the
understanding as well as the assurance of ex-
perience.^^ But alas! the demands of his phi-
losophy distorted the perceptions of his senses.
Moreover, his logic was more untiring than his
observation. Yet when he made experiments,
[ 103 ]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
as he did frequently, through the vivisection of
animals, it was with masterly cleverness.
Unquestionably Galen's over-aptness at find-
ing a purpose and use for every organ, — a use
and purpose which made the organ what it
was — contributed to his dominance in the
centuries after him. Today we are disposed to
find his truer greatness in his investigation of
the physiology of animals, by vivisection. For
example, although the presence of some blood
in the arteries had been sensed before him, he
would seem to have been the first to demon-
strate it. He was a great contributor to experi-
mental physiology, though unfortunately he
came at the close of the ancient time, when no
man was to follow him to continue his dis-
coveries. Says Dr. Garrison:
" He was the first to describe the cranial
nerves and the sympathetic system, made the
first experimental sections of the spinal cord,
producing hemiplegia; produced aphonia by
cutting the recurrent laryngeal; and gave the
first valid explanation of the mechanism of
respiration. He showed that the arteries con-
tain blood (by performing the Antyllus opera-
tion), and demonstrated the motor power of
the heart by showing that the blood pulsates
[ 104]
THE FINAL SYSTEM: GALEN
between the heart and a ligated artery, but not
beyond it. Like the Alexandrians, he inferred
that the arteries and veins anastomose through
certain invisible and extremely small vessels.
He also showed that an excised heart will beat
outside the body, a common incident at the
sacrificial rites, and good evidence that its beat
does not depend upon the nervous system. In
these matters Galen gave to medicine that
method of putting questions to nature and of
arranging things so that nature may answer
them, which we call experiments." ®^
In the depths of his mind, Galen was seeking
to combine Hippocrates and Aristotle. He
drew from the former the fruitful conception
of the vital unity of the human organism, vital
in its power of living and nourishing itself,
and when sick or wounded of regaining its
normal state through the vis medicatrix
naturae, the restoring power of its own nature.
The human organism was strictly a unity: the
singleness of its life could not be divided.
From Hippocrates he took also the four
humors, and, as it were, from any source one
chooses, the four elements of fire, water, earth
and air, and the four primary physical qual-
ities of cold and warm and dry and moist ,
[105]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
He drew, nay he drained, his teleology from
Aristotle, and, like the Master, applied it to
every part of the organic structure: Nature
makes nothing without a purpose, and nothing
in vain. When Galen is considering the nature
and action of an organ, or of the body gen-
erally, his mind passes quickly from the sheer
description of the thing, and even from the
consideration of its efficient cause, and springs
forward to grasp its final cause or purpose:
therein lies the explanation of the thing, and
the explanation, nay the true description, of
the function which it is its nature to fulfill.
Galen's passionate preoccupation with the
purpose of a living organ, colors and even
fashions his description both of the organ itself
and of the process through which it performs
its function.
The function of the body generally is to
afford a setting for the soul or life. The bearer
of ]*fe, or of the vital forces vivifying the body
and directing it to the performance of its
functions, is the pneuma. Entering with the
breath, it becomes threefold: the psychic
pneuma (or, in English, the animal spirits),
working in the brain and through the nervous
system; the \iie-pneuma (or vital spirits) of
[io6]
THE FINAL SYSTEM: GALEN
the heart and arteries; the physical pneuma
(natural spirits) dwelling in the liver, and
through the veins making blood and nourishing
the body and its growth. The liver draws its
supplies from the stomach and intestines.
The life of the body fulfills itself in these
three functions of the pneuma. The various
parts — organs and tissues, solids and fluids
' — are thereby made into a whole, and united
in their ultimate function of promoting the in-
dividual's life. Health consists in their
cooperation in proper proportions according to
the age, sex and mode of life of the individual.
Sickness is a disturbance of these proportions
and of this harmonious working. Between
sickness and health lies a condition of predis-
position to one or another form of disease, due
to the individual's constitution or tempera-
ment.
Inception, increase, summit, and recession
make the four stages of acute disease. In
addition to this rather Hippocratic view, the
Galenic treatment proceeded from the principle
that every disturbance of function necessarily
implied a pathological affection of the parts
in question. The physician first decides
whether the power of the physis, or nature of
[107]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
the body (a Hippocratic conception), was of
itself able to cure the part and restore its func-
tion. He acts only when nature has proved
inadequate. He should consider the inception
of the disease, decide upon its causes, and
endeavor to remove them or prevent their
action. He should resort to further counter-
acting measures as the pronounced symptoms
of the disease declare themselves.
Galen conceived the physis as the sum of the
powers which impel the body's parts to perform
their functions. In the sick body one or the
other of these powers exceeds or is deficient
in its action. The physician's care must first
of all concern itself with the expelling power,
which produces the excretions and evacuations
of the healthy body, and in sickness expels
the matter of the disease. The attracting, re-
straining and alterative powers are then to be
investigated; and the skillful physician will
perceive which is defective or too violent, and
treat the patient accordingly.
The working principles of Galen are mainly
those of Hippocrates. It is in the endeavor
to establish them in science and philosophy
that Galen goes far beyond the man he called
his master. In this endeavor he combined the
[108]
THE FINAL SYSTEM.* GALEN
greater knowledge of the six hundred years'
experience with disease which lay between him
and Hippocrates, considering and weighing
(not dispassionately!) the views of the leading
intervening physicians. He was also a brilliant
investigator himself, and through his dissec-
tions and vivisections advanced the sciences of
anatomy and physiology. Even here he erred,
not infrequently, through applying the anat-
omy of pigs and apes to the human body,
which he did not dissect. Beyond this he was
led, and sometimes astray, by his conviction of
the sufficiency of his medical theories and the
philosophy of nature on which he sought to
base them. He was over-confident in himself
and his knowledge, and many a pillar of his
medical temple was destined to fall. Yet the
great building endured for fifteen centuries.
To describe or sketch the contents of Galen's
writings would require a volume. They cover
medicine, and, one might say, biology; they
concern themselves with philosophy, with psy-
chology, and even with the arts. Many of them
were great and valuable treatises, as, for ex-
ample, that on The Places {or parts) Affected.
It sets forth the importance of reaching a clear
decision as to the part affected and the nature
[ 109]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
of the trouble, and proceeds on the principle
that there can be no disturbance in the function
without an affection of the part. After some
chapters of general consideration, the means
of making the proper local diagnosis through-
out all the parts of the body are considered
successively and in detail.
Equally valuable are his treatises on Thera-
peutics and Hygiene; and large and important
compositions are devoted to the methods of the
various medical sects, — Galen was a tremen-
dous medical polemicist. A famous treatise is
that of the Use or Utility, to wit, the function
and purpose, oj the Parts. Through its long
course, with great detail, it seeks to exemplify
and prove the Aristotelian principle that
Nature makes nothing in vain. It demon-
strates that the parts and organs of the body
could not be better disposed, and that they
are perfectly adapted to the fulfillment of
their functions. It discerns and would prove
the perfect harmony among the different parts.
There are in it constant disquisitions upon final
causes, references to God and Nature, and
corresponding diatribes against those who
accept the action of chance and the theory of
the atoms.
[no]
THE FINAL SYSTEM: GALEN
The comparatively short but compendious
treatise On the Natural Faculties,''' that is to
say, the powers inherent in the physis or
nature of the human individual, reflects many
of Galen's characteristics, and may be noticed
briefly.
The ancients, Galen for example, were more
addicted to personification than ourselves, who
have substituted processes for persons, thus
using a more commonplace word to express
what is still mysterious. The "processes of
nature " is a common phrase, while Galen
thinks of nature somewhat as an artist, accom-
plishing her works by rixvy], which is art. The
human physis or nature is endowed with its
own powers of attraction and repulsion. More
broadly and perhaps profoundly speaking, it is
alive, possessed of life, which is the sum of
its natural powers. Galen is not far from
modern vitalistic thinking.^^
It has been said that there were many
Galens; and, indeed, the tract before us ex-
hibits various intellectual processes and
methods which we should be surprised to find
combined in any one modern person. In it
Galen is biologist as well as physician. It
evinces penetrating observation, with close
[III]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
reasoning on the data of very clever vivisec-
tion. In it Galen also is a philosopher; and
offers the reader much a priori reasoning and
sheer intellectual construction. He is a Greek,
in love with logic, with dialectic, with reason-
ing upon hypotheses. For him, intelligent
people are *' those who understand the conse-
quences of their hypotheses"; whereas we
should be more apt to speak of " those who
know what they are talking about."
Galen is under the necessity of finding names
and categories for his thinking. Sometimes
with him to formulate a statement, devise a
concept, give a satisfactory name, is his near-
est approach to an explanation, almost equiva-
lent to understanding a phenomenon or process.
Much that he says of the three powers of gene-
sis, growth, and nutrition are his verbally satis-
fying statements of what was, and still is, es-
sentially unknown. Such statements are sops
to the insatiate reasoning mind. Galen makes
them such as seem to him to " save the phenom-
ena " in each case, and also so that they will
dovetail; for he is always a system-builder.
Had he known something of chemistry, he
would have made his statements such as would
" save " other recondite phenom.ena. His more
[112]
THE FINAL SYSTEM: GALEN
detailed arguments sometimes seem but to am-
plify his general or introductory phrases.
It is the work of Nature to form all the parts
of the animal while still in the womb, and
after birth to bring the animal to its full size,
and maintain it. This is a threefold effect, and
the activities are three, " namely genesis,
growth, and nutrition. Genesis, however, is
not a simple activity of Nature, but is com-
pounded of alteration and shaping. That is to
say, in order that bone, nerve, veins, and all
other [tissues] may come into existence, the
underlying substance '"^ from which the animal
springs must be altered; and in order that the
substance so altered may acquire its appro-
priate shape and position, its cavities, out-
growths, attachments and so forth, it has to
undergo a shaping or formative process." '^
Then, proceeding from the partly false anal-
ogy of the semen and the seed cast into the
earth, he enlarges his descriptive detail, with-
out, of course, penetrating any further into the
process itself. He next takes up the faculty of
growth, which '' is one of increase and expan-
sion in length, breadth and thickness of the
solid parts of the animal (those which have
been subjected to the moulding or shaping
[113]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
process). Nutrition is an addition to these
without expansion."
The faculty of growth is present in the
embryo, but subordinate to the genetic faculty
until birth. Then, till the animal has reached
its full size, the faculty of growth dominates
while the alterative and nutritive faculties act
as its handmaids. " What then, is the property
of this faculty of growth? To extend in every
direction that which has already come into
existence, that is to say, the solid parts of the
body, the arteries, veins, nerves, bones, carti-
lages, membranes, ligaments, and the various
simple and homogeneous coats of the stomach,
intestines, arteries, etc."
Galen then describes how children stretch
and blow up pigs' bladders; but the bladders
get thinner as they are expanded. The children
cannot make the bladder get bigger, as only
Nature can, through nourishment.
" It will now, therefore, be clear to you that
nutrition is a necessity for growing things.
For if such bodies were distended, but not at
the same time nourished, they would take on
a false appearance of growth, but not a true
growth. And further, to be distended in all
directions belongs only to bodies whose growth
[114]
THE FINAL SYSTEM: GALEN
is directed by Nature; for those which are
distended by us undergo this distension in one
direction but grow less in the others. . . . Thus
Nature alone has the power to expand a body in
all directions so that it remains unruptured
and preserves completely its previous form."
As for nutrition, the third of these great
faculties: "When the matter which flows to
each part of the body in the form of nutri-
ment is being worked up into it, this activity
is nutrition, and its cause is the nutritive
faculty. Of course, the kind of activity here
involved is also an alteration, but not like that
occurring in the stage of genesis. For in
[genesis] something comes into existence which
did not exist previously, while in nutrition the
inflowing material becomes assimilated to that
which has already come into existence. There-
fore the former kind of alteration has been
termed genesis and the latter assimilation." '^
Nowadays this description would be supple-
mented, or superseded, by a description of the
multiplication of the body-cells in the growth
of tissue, both extra- and intra-uterine, —
which we perceive and can to some extent de-
scribe, but still cannot account for, save as a
power of nature.
[115]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
In Other parts of his tract, Galen argues
vigorously against what Erasistratus and others
had said — and well said — as to the action
of the bodily organs upon mechanical prin-
ciples and according to the capacities of their
forms. Galen's vitalism carries him into many
a false counter-argument. His fundamental
view may be given mainly in his words:
" Thus every hypothesis of channels '^ as
an explanation of natural functioning is perfect
nonsense. For if there were not an inborn
faculty given by Nature to each one of
the organs at the very beginning, then ani-
mals could not continue to live even for a
few days. . . . For there is not a single
animal which could live or endure for the
shortest time if, possessing within itself so
many different parts, it did not employ
faculties which were attractive of what is
appropriate, eliminative of what is foreign, and
alterative of what is destined for nutrition.
On the other hand, if we have these faculties,
we no longer need channels, little or big, rest-
ing on an unproven hypothesis, for explaining
the secretion of urine and bile, and the con-
ception of some favorable situation (in which
point alone Erasistratus shows some common
[ii6]
THE FINAL SYSTEM: GALEN
sense, since he does regard all the parts of the
body as having been well and truly placed and
shaped by Nature).
" But let us suppose he remained true to his
own statement that Nature is ' artistic,' — this
Nature which, at the beginning, well and truly
shaped and disposed all the parts of the animal,
and, after carrying out this function (for she
left nothing undone), brought it forward to
the light of the day, endowed with certain
faculties necessary for its very existence, and,
thereafter, gradually increased it until it
reached its due size. If he argued consist-
ently on this principle, I fail to see how he can
continue to refer natural functions to the small-
ness or largeness of canals, or to any other
similarly absurd hypothesis. For this Nature
which shapes and gradually adds to the parts
is most certainly extended throughout their
whole substance. Yes, indeed, she shapes and
nourishes and increases them through and
through, not on the outside only. For Prax-
iteles and Phidias and all the other statuaries
used merely to decorate their material on the
outside, in so far as they were able to touch it;
but its inner parts they left unembellished, un-
wrought, unaffected by art or forethought,
[117]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
since they were unable to penetrate therein
and to reach and handle all portions of the
material. It is not so, however, with Nature.
Every part of a bone she makes bone, every
part of the flesh she makes flesh, and so with
fat and all the rest; there is no part which she
has not touched, elaborated, and embellished.
Phidias, on the other hand, could not turn wax
into ivory and gold, nor yet gold into wax:
for each of these remains as it was at the
commencement and becomes a perfect statue
simply by being clothed externally in a form
and artificial shape. But Nature does not pre-
serve the original character of any kind of
matter; if she did so, then all parts of the
animal would be blood, — that blood, namely,
which flows to the semen from the impregnated
female, and which is, so to speak, like the
statuary's wax, a single uniform matter, sub-
jected to the artificer. From this there arises
no part of the animal which is as red and moist
[as blood is], for bone, artery, vein, nerve,
cartilage, fat, gland, membrane, and marrow
are not blood, though they arise from it."
These passages are from the opening chap-
ters of the second book. The last part of the
first book and the remainder of book two
[ii8]
I
THE FINAL SYSTEM: GALEN
present the working of the innate attractive
and alterative powers of the organs, whereby
they take and transform whatever nutriment is
needed for their functions. Galen writes as
a physiologist or biologist, though he has in
mind the medical usefulness of his matter.
The opening paragraph of the third book gives
his final summary of this subject:
" It has been made clear in the preceding
discussion that nutrition occurs by an altera-
tion or assimilation of that which nourishes to
that which receives nourishment, and that
there exists in every part of the animal a
faculty which in view of its activity we call, in
general terms, alterative, or, more specifically,
assimilative and nutritive. It was also shown
that a sufficient supply of the matter which the
part being nourished makes into nutriment
for itself, is ensured by virtue of another
faculty which naturally attracts its proper
juice [humour] ; that that juice is proper to
each part which is adapted for assimilation, and
that the faculty which attracts the juice is
called, by reason of its activity, attractive or
epispastic. It has also been shown that assimi-
lation is preceded by adhesion, and this, again,
by presentation, the latter stage being, as one
[119]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
might say, the end or goal of the activity cor-
responding to the attractive faculty. For the
actual bringing up of nutriment from the veins
into each of the parts takes place through the
activation of the attractive faculty, whilst to
have been finally brought up and presented to
the part is the actual end for which we desired
such an activity; it is attracted in order that
it may be presented. After this, considerable
time is needed for the nutrition of the animal.
Whilst a thing may be even rapidly attracted,
on the other hand to become adherent, altered,
and entirely assimilated to the part which is
being nourished and to become a part of it,
cannot take place suddenly, but requires a con-
siderable amount of time. But if the nutritive
juice, so presented, does not remain in the part,
but withdraws to another one, and keeps flow-
ing away, and constantly changing and shift-
ing its position, neither adhesion nor comolete
assimilation will take place in any of them.
Here too, then, the [animal's] nature has need
of some other faculty for ensuring a prolonged
stay of the presented juice at the part, and this
not a faculty which comes in from somewhere
outside but one which is resident in the part
which is to be nourished. This faculty, again,
[ 120]
THE FINAL SYSTEM: GALEN
in view of its activity our predecessors were
obliged to call retentive." "^
The latter part of the third book is largely
devoted to an exposition of the genesis and
action of the four humors, which (Galen main-
tains) Hippocrates, Aristotle and others of the
ancients, correctly and sufficiently set forth.
He professes no one could " offer anything
wiser than what has been said " by them. Yet
even here, and still more palpably through
other portions of this work, and indeed through-
out all his writings, he does not follow Hippo-
crates and Aristotle as implicitly as he pro-
fesses. He had learned more than either of
them knew of the conduct of the body in health
and disease. Yet, had he kept closer to the
principles of sage Hippocrates, his writings
would have shown a wiser reticence, and more
respect for the actual boundaries of the writer's
knowledge.
But Galen built his system out of his in-
tellectual inheritance. His treatment of the
old materials was affected by the mentality of
the second century, in which he shared. He
contributed personally the fruits of his own
acute observation and experiment, and brought
to bear upon the whole his extraordinary
[121]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
power of coordinating disparate elements into
a system.
Galen represents the closing development
of Greek biology and medicine. The Galenic
system was a preservative amalgamation of
Aristotle and the Hippocratic tradition with
whatever was added by Galen himself. No
need to enlarge or change it, since the in-
capacity of the following time for scientific
investigation and even for fruitful clinical ob-
servation prevented the further growth of
biological or medical knowledge. Dissection
and vivisection halted; clinical observation be-
came dulled. Galen marks the end of progress
in biology and medicine as his contemporary,
Ptolemy, marks the end of progress in as-
tronomy.
Galen's immense influence did not commence
in his lifetime, nor arise at once upon his
death. Time had to elapse before the sterile
centuries felt the need of some unquestionable
and encyclopaedic authority on which to base
their medicine. As for biology as an investi-
gating science, that had ceased to exist.
Among the ancient luminaries in medicine,
Galen was nearest to the coming Byzantine and
Medieval period not merely in time but in
[ 122 ]
I
THE FINAL SYSTEM: GALEN
spirit. His systematic treatment of all matters
that men need know, his authoritative self-
assurance, and above all, perhaps, his com-
pleted teleology, or convincing declaration of
the purpose of every part and organ of the
body, contributed to make of him the source or
canon par excellence of Arabian and western
medieval medicine. In many garbs and forms
he reigned for centuries.
[123]
VI. THE LINKAGE WITH THE
MODERN TIME
IN WAYS inscrutable as well as in trace-
able currents, Greek biology and medicine
have entered into their greater modern
congeners. There is no unbroken and con-
tinuous record. Modern biology starts afresh
from observation and experiment, and advances
through constantly spreading avenues of
scientific research. Medicine and anatomy
gather impulse from rebellions against the
ancient authorities and rejections of their
statements; Paracelsus (1493-1541), but re-
cently recognized as a great and original physi-
cian, declares against the four humors of the
old pathology, asserts that they do not exist,
and publicly burns the works of Galen.
Vesalius, " founder of modern anatomy,"
proves that Galen's anatomical descriptions
are wrong because based on the dissection of
apes and pigs instead of men and women.
Yet even when men think to disavow and
reject, they are affected by what has made part
[ 124]
LINKAGE WITH THE MODERN TIME
of their education. For example, after long
and baffling vivisections, Harvey demonstrates
the systemic circulation of the blood. His dis-
covery has come through years of anxious ob-
servation, and not from what he has read (to
the contrary!) in books. Yet his reasonings,
if not his observations, never free themselves
from the influence of Aristotle; and his great
discovery sorely perplexes him, since he cannot
understand the final cause, that is to say, the
purpose, of the blood's rapid round throughout
the body: not for generations was this to be
cleared up through the discovery of oxygen
and the gradual elucidation of the combustion
involved in the renewal and cleansing of the
system by the blood.
The cessation of growth brings decay to
any branch of knowledge. Only further
accomplishment can fully utilize and carry on
the achievements of the past. Progress alone
conserves, coming not to destroy but to fulfill.
Biology was not prosecuted after Galen's
time, and the healing arts of medicine and
surgery gained Kttle that was new from clinical
experience. Vainly they sought to conserve
themselves through an eclecticism which tended
to become partial and then scholastic. As the
[ 125]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
faculty of investigation failed, the greater
ancient sources were no longer used in the
fullness of their contents and living spirit.
In the East, the energies aroused by Islam
stemmed the decline of medicine. Among the
early " Arabian " physicians (the best of them
were Persians) were good practitioners and
clinical observers. There was enough active
intelligence to demand and support the use of
the best sources of medical science, which
were of course the Greek. One of these good
physicians, the princely Persian, Avicenna
(980-1037), was an acquisitive and systema-
tizing genius of the first order. His great
"Canon of the healing art," drawn chiefly
from Galen and Aristotle, presents the contents
of Greek medicine as a closed and serried
system. This book was of enormous influence
upon medieval Europe, and is said still to rule
in the Moslem world.
Nevertheless in Avicenna's " Canon " and in
the treatises current in medieval Europe, Greek
medicine was embalmed, rather than alive and
quick in its creative spirit of investigation.
Moreover, medieval physicians and compilers
tended to select and use what was on the level
of their own appreciation or understanding. So
[126]
LINKAGE WITH THE MODERN TIME
they left untouched much that was best in the
Greek medical legacy.
At a later time, say in the sixteenth century,
the spirit of scientific observation was stirring
more actively, and the epoch-making people
of the age worked somewhat in the old Greek
way, making ready a period of palpable scien-
tific progress. Such men were fitted to receive
the best that the great and ancient past con-
tained, which it now seemed to offer these
brighter minds as with a new disclosure.
But in respect to medicine and anatomy
there were obstacles to any such acceptance.
The men given to actual observation were im-
patient of the past's authority; they chose to
see for themselves. Vesalius was not like those
who in his own and prior generations could
see in the actual human body what Mundinus
or Galen said was there. He was looking for
himself, and was vehemently moved at the dis-
crepancy between Galen and the human fact.
For him, Galen had ceased to reign.
Thus from the times of Paracelsus, VesaKus
?nd Pa^e, and then of Harvey, two general
factors tended to end the reign of the once
dominant Galen. The one was the active
scientific spirit — quite like the Greek — im-
[ 127]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
pelling these men and their successors to go to
nature for their facts, and not accept them
from authority; and the other was the con-
comitant or resulting increase of knowledge
of the human body in health and disease, and
of other living organisms, as well as of the
action of natural agencies affecting them.
Some of these men were even tempted to
depreciate the ancients, drawing a breath of
relief after the long incumbency, the dead
weight, of their authority. Yet as medicine
through the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies, and to our own day, continued on its
chequered and romantic career, ever and anon
there came to it the impulse to take refuge in
the old Hippocratic wisdom.
The struggle, nay, the romance of medicine,
springs from the desire of the intellectual
creature to find a reason, an underlying ex-
planation, to " save " and account for observed
phenomena. The thoughtful doctor seeks to
account for the action of disease, and find an
accordant theory, as well as means of cure.
His desire to understand disease keeps
him from being satisfied with such remedies as
mere experience has shown to be followed with
good results.
[128]
LINKAGE WITH THE MODERN TIME
What man who desires to account for things
as obscure as disease, or to accomplish so diffi-
cult a task as its cure, can avoid framing a
working hypothesis in his mind? He may come
to admire and rely on his hypothesis till it
grows into a comprehensive explanation, a
compelling theory, of life and disease. Any
rational means of cure, transcending the
groping of haphazard empiricism, must conform
to this theory. His working hypothesis was,
to be sure, suggested by some facts of obser-
vation. But from their child it may become
their master. In that case it will be apt to
deflect observation, and may cause the ob-
server to see only facts that accord with it.
In pure or abstract science a good hypothesis
or theory should account for the facts ob-
served ; and new facts may undo it. Till those
new facts appear, there may be no call to re-
consider the theory, or use it practically.
But medicine, on the other hand, is essentially
a practice, a healing art. Its function is to
cure the sick.
The general appearance and conduct of
living beings suggests some conception of life
and some idea of the disturbance called dis-
ease. This idea may carry a notion of the
[129]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
means of cure, adjusted to the symptoms.
The test of validity comes when doctors apply
their theories to their patients. If the doctors
be intelligent and rationally observant, like the
Greeks, clinical, and perhaps too frequently
death-bed experience may lead them in time
to reject some particular theory of disease and
cure. But experience, having overthrown one
theory, is likely to lead the doctors to shape
another. Thus goes on the alternate conflict
and alliance between theory and practice,
which makes the intellectual romance of medi-
cine. The character and vicissitudes of this
romance are affected from century to century,
by the intellectual temper of the time, con-
structive, for example, or sceptical or eclectic.
This conflict is set forth in that inaugural
Hippocratic writing entitled. The Ancient
Medicine, which argues that the practitioner
should have nothing to do with philosophers'
theories regarding the universe of things and
the nature of man. These theories incidentally
find the causes of disease in excessive heat or
cold, moisture or dryness. The practice of
medicine needs no such vain and superfluous
hypotheses. It is a healing art learned through
the rational teaching of cumulative observa-
[130]
I
LINKAGE WITH THE MODERN TIME
tion. This ordered store of clinical experience
will tell the practitioner when no application
of the " hot or cold " theory, but a regulated
diet, will benefit the patient.
Yet the Hippocratics used working hypo-
theses of general application. They conceived
them as the fruits of medical experience. The
two most famous were the hypothesis of the
four humors and that of the vis medicatrix
naturae, the healing energy of nature herself.
The first has been discarded; but the second
is in some form and manner still accepted
universally in medicine and surgery.
Another fundamental Hippocratic convic-
tion or hypothesis was that diseases came
from natural, not demonic, causes, and should
be treated by natural remedies rather than
by magic. It was this conviction that enabled
Greek medicine to become a rational art and
possible science. One sees at once its broad
affiliation. The assumption of the constant
action of natural causes underlies every me-
chanical art and all physical science. In
medicine, the hypothesis that disease is due to
natural causes, and should be treated by cor-
responding remedies, has had a chequered
career! Yet one will scarcely beg the question
[131]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
in saying that it has been accepted by the best
medical practice from the time of Hippocrates
to our own day!
One might write an interesting history of
medicine, as the story of the conflicts and
alliances between theory and practice. One
should, however, bear in mind that the differ-
ences among the doctors of any period in the
actual treatment of disease have been less
marked than their controversies might seem to
indicate.
Celsus told us of the Empirics who pro-
tested that they would have nothing to do with
remote and hidden causes; of the Methodists
who were partial to generalizations. More
interesting were the Pneumatics, with their
vital principle of the Pneuma, an idea almost
as old as man. Yet these ancient schools were
not so very wide apart in practice.
A century later, Galen, sagaciously survey-
ing the medicine of his own time and the older
teachings, strove to make a system from his
conceptions of the medical wisdom of Hippo-
crates and the biology of Aristotle. Although
a great observer, he was in love with logical
a priori construction: with him, intelligent
people were " those who understand the conse-
quences of their hypotheses."
[132]
LINKAGE WITH THE MODERN TIME
From Galen we leap forward to his would-
be overthrower, Paracelsus, who cast off the
old theories, yet reached back his hand to
Hippocrates as a wise practitioner and pro-
found observer of the courses of disease, like
Paracelsus himself! His younger contempo-
rary, Vesalius, investigating with his own hands
and eyes, rejected much of the old anatomy,
and apparently troubled himself little with
medical theory. But Harvey — to mention
only one feature of the working of this great
intelligence — was harassed by the craving to
reconcile the circulation of the blood with the
Aristotelian physiology or teleology of the nat-
ural parts of man. And if Harvey's dis-
covery of the systemic circulation appears as
the fruit of investigation and experiment, his
pregnant contribution to the theory, or knowl-
edge, of generation was in itself an hypothesis
(acceptable no longer!), to wit: omne vivum
ex ovo.
Practice and theory! medicine must have
both; and when clinical experience has taught
its lessons, the microscope and laboratory be-
come the chief means of medical advance. The
wise practitioner, though he turn his mind from
theorizing, will still be he who proceeds upon
some sane working hypothesis.
[ 133 ]
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
Belonging to Harvey's own generation the
extraordinary Fleming, van Helmont, forms a
link between Paracelsus and the theorizing
systems of the medico-chemical and medico-
physical schools of the early seventeenth cen-
tury. The chemical school (Sylvius of Leyden
may be called the founder) starts from the con-
ception of fermentation through the action, for
example, of the saliva and gastric juices upon
foods. Health consisted in the proper balance
of acids and alkalies, and sickness in the excess
of one or the other. The cure lay in the re-
duction of the excessive element. On the
other hand, the physicists, starting from the
admitted circulation of the blood, sought a
physical or mechanical interpretation of all
bodily processes. Health lay in their unim-
peded action.
Since the physical as well as chemical knowl-
edge of that time was utterly inadequate for
the basis of sound medical practice, a reaction
was to be expected. The advocates of these
theories had drawn more than one conception
from Greek medicine, to weave into their
systems. Now the reaction inaugurated by
the Englishman, Thomas Sydenham (1624-
1689), directed itself toward the conscious
[134]
LINKAGE Vl^ITH THE MODERN TIME
acceptance of the principles of Hippocratic
practice. Not improperly was Sydenham
called " the English Hippocrates." Although
conversant with the natural sciences of his
time, he refused to base the practice of medi-
cine upon any theory drawn from them, even
as Hippocrates and his school had refused to
base their medicine upon the theories of the
Greek physical philosophers.
Like Hippocrates, Sydenham set himself in
every case to study the whole course of the
patient's disease, observing the succession of
symptoms, and the response of the patient to
the treatment employed. Like Hippocrates,
he conceived a disease as the struggle of the
body's healing energy — the vis medicatrix
naturae — with the noxious agent. He divided
the symptoms into: (i) those essentially per-
taining to the action of the noxious cause; (2)
those arising from the reaction of the patient's
system; and (3) those induced by the treat-
ment. He developed the conception of succes-
sive phases of disease, and of the pernicious
or benignant symptoms pertaining to them.
Sydenham, again like Hippocrates, con-
cerned himself chiefly with acute disease. A
malady became chronic through the slowness
[135]
II
c
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
of the patient's reaction or the persistence of
the noxious agent. And, finally, he showed
himself true to the Hippocratic spirit in refus-
ing blind obedience to any authority (even
that of Hippocrates himself, whose reputed
works he had studied diligently) and in testing
everything by observation. His spirit is re-
flected in a passage from one of his letters
referring to his own medical writings:
" I have been very careful to write nothing
but what was the product of faithful observa-
tion, and neither suffered myself to be deceived
by idle speculations, nor have deceived others
by obtruding anything upon them but down-
right matter of fact." '^
With Sydenham and the turn toward Hip-
pocratic methods, we may leave this romance
of the conflict and alliance between medical
theory, or medical science, and medical prac-
tice. To continue it exceeds my space as it
does my powers. We have the word of the
veteran of medical science and medical history
that Hippocrates and Sydenham "did useful
work for mankind in the twilight." Sir Clifford
Allbutt has loved them well, these great for-
bears of his, kin to each other though two
thousand years apart. But now Sir Clifford,
[136]
LINKAGE WITH THE MODERN TIME
speaking in 191 9, deems that a new birth of
medicine is taking place: " What is then the
new birth, this revolution in medicine? It
is nothing less than its enlargement from an
art of observation and empiricism to an applied
science founded upon research; from a craft of
tradition and sagacity to an applied science
of analysis and law; from a descriptive code of
surface phenomena to the discovery of deeper
affinities; from a set of rules and axioms of
quality to measurements of quantity." Sursum
corda! — Lift up your hearts! Before us
spreads a fair prospect of the reconcilement
of theory and practice, in a final system of
scientific medicine!
However this may be, we have recently real-
ized, as never before, the vast range and com-
plexity of the elements entering our mental-
ities; and we who may live to witness the new
revolution, should also be ready to recognize
the indirect, the obscure yet basic, influence of
Greek medicine. The modern medical man no
longer looks to Galen or Hippocrates for
specific instruction; but he well may make his
own the spirit of the Hippocratic writings and
the wise principles of Hippocratic practice.
He may still take to himself many a Hippo-
[137]
II
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
cratic precept; and well for him and all with
whom he came in contact if he have drawn
into his nature, and reflect in his professional
conduct, the Hippocratic ethics of the heal-
ing art.
And if modern medicine and biology no
longer draw directly from the old Greek store,
we still may reflect upon the antecedent in-
fluence by which we profit. The guiding knowl-
edge, which we no longer need, did its work
in our immediate or mediate predecessors, and
thus led on to us. The shoulders that we
stand on are the taller because the men before
us, or the men before them, stood upon the
shoulders of the Greeks. So the Greek founda-
tion stones have their place in our edifice of
knowledge. And still at the summit waves the
flag of nature, — the old Hippocratic (t>v(ns —
as the healer of the body's ills: vovao^v (t)vaeLs
irjTpol, vis medicatrix naturae. Today more
universally than ever, if not more profoundly,
we realize that the power of an organism to
heal or restore itself is one of the universal
marks dividing all living organisms — plants,
and animalS; and man — from the inorganic
world.
[138]
I
BRIEF OUTLINE OF INFLUENCE OF
GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
Christian Fathers, including St. Augustine, (3S4-43o) —
Teleological view of the human body.
Abstractions from Galen:
Oribasius (325-423) »
Paulus of Aegina (625-690),
Alexander of Tralles (525-605), zealous Galenists.
Hippocrates and Galen, in Arabic (almost slavish
devotion) :
Rhazes, (c. 8so-c. 923), in theory a Galenist, in prac-
tice, Hippocratic;
Avicenna (980-1037); the "Canon," based on Galen;
Avenzoar (Hispano-Arabic, c. 1072-1162), disciple of
Galen ;
Averroes (1126-1198), through whom Aristotelian
science became known in Europe during the Middle
Ages; shook some doctrines of Galen.
Translations of Hippocrates and Galen, from Arabic into
Latin: e.g.
Constantine (monk at Monte Cassino) tio87,
Gerard of Cremona, tii85,
Mark of Toledo, c. 1200.
No translation of Aristotle's Historia Animalium, or of
the De Generatione Animalium, of Hippocrates' De
Generatione, or of Theophrastus' De Plantis reached
the earlier Middle Age; knowledge of these works
might have led to a rediscovery of Nature, centuries
earlier, and would have altered the intellectual history
of Europe.
Learned revival of 13th century: translations, from the
Arabic, but also from the Greek, of texts of Hippo-
[ 139]
BRIEF OUTLINE
crates and Galen who became integral parts in the
medical instruction in Universities for centuries;
Michael the Scot (1175 ?-i 234 ?) ; two versions of
Aristotle's Historia Animalium;
Albertus Magnus (1206-80), Commentary on Historia
Animalium; Albertus began first-hand plant-study
in modern times.
14th century: Nicholas of Reggio translated the treatise
of Galen On the uses of the (bodily) parts, from
Greek into Latin; the best account of the human
body then available and the starting point of modern
scientific medicine;
Conrad von Megenberg (1309-1398) ; Book of Nature,
founded on Latin versions of Aristotle and Galen.
iSth century: Recovery of more Hippocratic and Galenic
texts, which were turned into Latin; e.g., Thomas
Linacre (c. 1460-1524) ; *' De Naturalibus Faculta-
tibus", 1523;
Isolated Edition of Galen, 1490, but Hippocratic works
first printed in 1525.
i6th century: A new biological science, largely due to
Aristotle and Galen, although Paracelsus (1493-1541)
destroyed the ' humoral pathology ', and pubUcly
burned the works of Galen;
First Greek text of the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, 1532,
edited by Rabelais;
Vesalius (1514-1564) the modem " Father of Anatomy ";
though he based his work on Galen, yet he shook
the authority of Galen, by proving errors of Galen;
Antonio Benivieni (tiS02) revived Hippocratic tradi-
tion by publishing notes of cases, with records of
deaths and post-mortem examinations, — as did
Amatus Lusitanus (1511-c. 1562), of Portugal;
Ambroise Pare (1517-1590), "Father of Modem
Surgery"; though no classical scholar, profoundly
influenced by classical traditions;
Fabridus ab Acquapendente (i 537-1619), founder of
modern embryology and an Aristotelian;
William Harvey (1578-1657), founder of modem experi-
[140]
I
BRIEF OUTLINE
mental physiology, the greatest biologist since Aris-
totle, whose work On Generation is a commentary
on Aristotle in the Aristotelian spirit of return to
nature.
17th century: Great revival of Hippocratic tradition:
Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689) "The English Hippo-
crates ",
Herman Boerhaave (i 668-1 738).
1 8th century: Partial eclipse of the ancients, through
scientists' absorption in direct investigation of Nature;
cf., e.g.,
C. Linnaeus (i 707-1 778),
Georges Cuvier (i 769-1832).
Rediscovery of the significance of Hippocrates and of the
Aristotelian biology, — a modern achievement:
R. T. H. Laennec (i 781-1826), inventor of stetho-
scope; valuable hints derived from Hippocratic
writings;
Francis Adams (i 796-1861); praise of Hippocratic
surgical treatises;
Johannes Miiller (1801-1858),
George H. Lewes (181 7-1878),
William Ogle (1827-1912);
all derived direct inspiration from Aristotle's biological
works, in spite of independent research work.
li
I
[141]
NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Cf. John Bumet, Early Greek Philosophy, London,
1920, 2 p. 70.
2. " From quotations I had seen I had a high notion
of Aristotle's merits, but I had not the most remote notion
what a wonderful man he was. Linnaeus and Cuvier have
been my two gods, though in very different ways, but they
were mere schoolboys to old Aristotle," in Letter of Darwin
to Ogle, 1882, cited by Arthur Piatt, in the preface to his
translation of the De Gen. Animalium; also by Charles
Singer, "Biology," p. 200, in R. W. Livingstone's The
Legacy of Greece, Oxford, 192 1.
3. W. A. Heidel, " Uepl ^vaeoss, a study of the con-
ception of Nature among the Pre-Socratics," in Proceedings
of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, XLV. 105
(1910)-
4. W. A. Heidel, o.c, p. 106. Professor Heidel has
rendered service to scholarship in bringing forward the
interpretative value of the Hippocratic writings. In saying
" Hippocrates," Professor Heidel is not intending to decide
the specific authorship of the tracts drawn upon.
5. I refer to the Uepi Aiatrrts, On Diet, and the
Uepl ToPTjs, On Generation. A sketch of their contents
is given by Charles Singer, in Livingstone's The Legacy
of Greece, Oxford, 192 1, pp. 168 ff.
6. The great edition is that of Littr6 in ten volumes,
with almost too ample introductions, and containing the
Greek text printed opposite the French translation, fimile
Littr6, Oeuvres Completes d'Hippocrate, Paris, 1839-53.
While Littr6 was bringing out his volumes, in the middle
of the nineteenth century, a good English translation, with
judicious introduction and notes, was made of The Genuine
Works of Hippocrates, by Francis Adams, under the
[145]
NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
Auspices of the Sydenham Society, London, 1849, and New
York, 1886. These writings vary in wisdom and knowledge,
and not all of them seem to emanate from the same school.
Hippocrates was of an Asclepiad family, and bom on the
island of Cos, where a temple school of medicine already
flourished. He is the supreme representative of the Coan
school. The doctrines of the rival school of Cnidus were
disapproved by him, yet will be found to have crept into
some of the writings included in the Hippocratic Corpus.
The Cnidian school was a little earher than the Coan,
and admirable in its practice. Unfortunately for us, and
for its own repute, the Cnidian writings are lost. Plato's
irony has ruined the Sophists, and the slurs of the Church
Fathers on such of their opponents as the Gnostics can-
not be repelled by men whom time has rendered voiceless.
We wish that the Cnidians also could speak for themselves.
7. The short piece llepl Tex*^ — Concerning [the] Art
[of healing], in the sixth volume of Littre's edition, argues
that there is a real medicine or healing art, which, for
example (§ 11), enables the physician to infer from other
symptoms what is not visible to the eye in internal disease.
8. Heidel's translation, o.c.
9. The writer of the tract has not in mind those
working hypotheses or pre-suppositions, which every man
of science uses in systematic observation and experiment;
he is thinking of the hypotheses which would ascribe all
disease to an excess of warmth or cold, dryness or moisture ;
for this does not tally with common experience.
10. Water, unmixed with wine, was not highly thought
of in ancient Greece.
11. On Ancient Medicine, § 13, Adams' translation, o.c,
slightly modified.
12. Heidel's translation, o.c. (a very little changed).
13. Adams' Translation, o.c.
14. The attention of Hippocrates and his school was
fastened upon acute diseases; chronic affections were re-
garded as a result of them.
15. Adams' Translation, o.c.
16. Says Charles Singer, after citing some of these
[146]
i
\
NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aphorisms: " No less remarkable is the following saying:
' In jaundice it is a grave matter if the liver becomes in-
durated.' Jaundice is a common and comparatively trivial
symptom following or accompanying a large variety of
diseases. In and by itself it is of little importance and
almost always disappears spontaneously. There is a small
group of pathological conditions, however, in which this is
not the case. The commonest and most important of these
are the fatal affections of cirrhosis and cancer of the liver,
in which that organ may be felt to be enlarged and hard-
ened. If therefore the liver can be so felt in a case of
jaundice, it is, as the Aphorism says, of gravest import," in
The Legacy of Greece, o.c, p. 232.
17. Largely Adams' Translation, o.c
18. Adams' Translation, o.c.
19. A common Hippocratic operation was opening the
patient's chest to relieve the accumulation of pus in cases
of empyema, following pneumonia. Cf. Charles Singer, in
The Legacy of Greece, o.c, p. 228.
One may note that the names of these two diseases and,
for that matter, a considerable part of medical nomen-
clature are from Hippocrates.
20. In The Legacy of Greece, o.c, p. 236.
21. This is apparent when he is seeking to orient him-
self in his subject, as in the opening chapters of the De
Partibus Animalium.
22. Assuredly Leonardo, if ever mortal man, is entitled
to be called a universal genius; and his dissections of
human bodies and animals were joined in his mind with
mathematics and mechanics, though not with philosophy.
But unhappily Leonardo's marvellous anatomical drawings
remained unknown and exerted no influence upon other
investigators, so far as may be ascertained. See H. Hop-
stock, " Leonardo as Anatomist," in Charles Singer's
Studies in the History and Method of Science, Oxford,
1921 ; II. 151-191.
23. D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, Historia Animalium,
English Translation, Oxford, 1910; William Ogle, De
Partibus Animalium, English Translation, Oxford, 1911;
[147]
NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arthur Piatt, De Generaiione Animalium, English Transla-
tion, Oxford, 1910.
24. Sir Arthur Hort, Theophrastus* Enquiry Into
Plants, with an English Translation, in The Loeb Classical
Library. 2 vols. New York, 191 6.
25. Aristotle refers to the vivisection of a chameleon
in Hist. An., II. 11. (S03 b.)
26. See Charles Singer, " Greek Biology and its Relation
to the Rise of Modern Biology," in Singer's Studies in the
History and Method of Science, Oxford, 1921; II. i-ioo.
27. It is more elaborately discussed in De Partibus Ani-
malium, II. I ff. (646 a.)
28. De Gen. An., II. i. (73^ b.)
29. De Partibus Animalium, I. S- (645 a.) ; says Henri
Poincar6: "We seek reality, but what is reaUty? The
physiologists tell us that organisms are formed of cells;
the chemists add that cells themselves are formed of atoms.
Does this mean that these atoms or these cells constitute
reality, or rather the sole reality? The way in which
these cells are arranged, and from which results the unity
of the individual, is not it also a reality much more in-
teresting than that of the isolated elements . . . ? " Again:
"... it is m the relations alone that objectivity must be
sought; it would be vain to seek it in beings considered
as isolated from one another." Foundations of Science,
(I9i3),p. 217 and p. 350.
30. De Partibus Animalium, I. i. (641 b.)
31. Hist An., VIII. I. (588 b.-s89 a.)
32. Uepl ^iaios raiSlovy On the Nature of the Embryo,
§ 29, dted by Singer, o.c.
33. Hist. An., VI. 3. (S61 a.)
34. D'Arcy W. Thompson, On Aristotle as a Biologist,
(Herbert Spencer Lecture, I9i3)> Oxford, 1913. Cf. also, in
greater detail, Charles Singer, in his " Greek Biology," etc.,
o.c, pp. 29 ff., which contains other examples of Aristotle's
penetrating observation aided by dissection.
35. Cf. William Ogle, De Partibus Animalium, English
Translation, Oxford, 19"; Int., p. 27.
36. Charles Singer, " Greek Biology," etc., o.c, pp. 19, 20.
[148]
NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
37. A like need impelled Immanuel Kant to conceive a
metaphysical scheme, suited to his apprehension of the
natural universe.
38. De Gen. An., I. i. (715 a.)
39. This passage unconsciously suggests that possibly the
motor or even the final cause lay implicit in the reasonings
of the old philosophers. Elsewhere Aristotle says: " The
ancient Nature-Philosophers . . . did not see that the
causes were numerous, but only saw the material and effi-
cient, and did not distinguish even these, while they made
no inquiry at all into the formal and final causes." De
Gen. An., V. i. (778 b.)
40. All of these passages are from De Partibus Ani-
malium, I. I. (640 b. ff.)
41. De Gen. An., I. i. (71S b.)
42. The " heterogeneous " parts; see Ante. It is Bichat's
( 1 771-1802) distinction between tissues and organs.
43. De Partibus Animalium, II. 11. (646 b.)
44. De Partibus Animalium, IV. 10. (687 a.)
45. De Gen. An., V. i. (778 a.) and the notes of the
translator.
46. De Gen. An., II. 3. (736 a.) and see the trans-
lator's note to the passage.
47. This very attractive generalization is not to be
pressed too far.
48. Hist. An., VIII. I. (588 a.)
49. De Gen. An., I. 18. Darwin held to a theory of
pangenesis, but it is not commonly accepted.
50. Hist. An., VIII. 2. (589 b.)
51. Hist. An., VIII. 12. (596 b.)
52. Collected in E. H. F. Meyer's Geschichte der
Botanik, Konigsberg, 1854-57; I. 88 ff.
53. Sir Arthur Hort, see n. 24.
S4- Of which Meyer, o.c, gives a synopsis, I. pp. 167 ff.
55. Julius von Sachs, History of Botany, 1 530-1860,
Translation by H. E. F. Gamsey, Oxford. 1890; examples,
pp. 17, 42, 376, 450.
56. Enquiry, I. i. 9.
57. Ibid., I. 1.4. The last clause in the last sentence is
[ 149]
NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
not translated thus by Hort. Singer's rendering seemed to
me more probable, — though I have made a slight modifi-
cation at the end. For it seemed to me less question-
begging to translate tuv fxeWovTOJv as " what they are
about to be, " rather than " what they are becoming," as
Singer does.
58. Ibid., I. I. II.
59. Ibid., III. 8. I ; Cf. II. 6. 6. Sometimes what the
ancients took for " male " and " female " were really dif-
ferent species.
60. Ibid., II. 8. 4.
6i. Charles Singer, "Greek Biology and its Relation
to the Rise of Modern Biology," in Singer's Studies in the
History and Method of Science, Oxford, 192 1; Vol. II.
p. 98.
62. For the next few pages I have followed, in the
main: Theodor Meyer-Steineg, Geschichte der Medizin,
Jena, 192 1; Max Neuburger, History of Medicine, Trans-
lation by Ernest Playfair, Oxford, 1910; Vol. I.; Sir T.
Clifford Allbutt, Greek Medicine in Rome, London, 192 1.
63. Soporific or some kind of anesthetic expedients
seem to have been used commonly, to deaden pain.
64. Sir Clifford Allbutt does not eliminate this con-
fusion, properly enough, from his interesting discussion of
the matter, in chapter X of his Greek Medicine in
Rome, o.c.
65. Cf. III. I. with III. 2. of Galen; On the Natural
Faculties, with an English Translation by Arthur John
Brock, in The Loeb Classical Library, New York, 1916.
66. F. H. Garrison, Introduction to the History of
Medicine, Philadelphia, 1921,3 p. 105.
67. Galen, On the Natural Faculties, o.c, n. 65.
68. Brock, in his Introduction, p. XXX, compares him
with Bergson.
69. Why not protoplasmic?
70. On the Natural Faculties, Brock's Translation,
o.c, I. 5.
71. On The Natural Faculties, Brock's Translation, o.c,
I. 5-8, with an occasional verbal alteration.
72. I. e. ducts, etc., the morphological factors empha-
sized by Erasistratus.
73. Brock's Translation.
74. Quoted in the Article on Sydenham, in the Dic-
tionary of National Biography. I have, in these last pages,
chiefly followed. Meyer-Steineg and Sudhoff, Geschichte
der Medizin im Uberblick mit Abbildungen, Jena, 192 1.
I
[150]
[151]
2>nr SDebt to (Bttttt anti TSiomt
AUTHORS AND TITLES
f
AUTHORS AND TITLES
I.
2.
3B.
4-
5-
6.
7-
8.
9
lOA.
lOB.
II.
12.
13-
14.
15-
16.
17-
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23-
Homer. John A. Scott, Northwestern University.
Sappho. David M. Robinson, The Johns Hopkins
University.
Euripides. F. L. Lucas, King's College, Cambridge.
Aeschylus and Sophocles. J. T. Sheppard, King's
College, Cambridge.
Aristophanes. Louis E. Lord, Oberlin College.
Demosthenes. Charles D. Adams, Dartmouth College.
Aristotle 's Poetics. Lane Cooper, Cornell University.
Greek Historians. Alfred E. Zimmern, University
of Wales.
LuciAN. Francis G. Allinson, Brown University.
Plautus and Terence. Charles Knapp, Barnard
College, Columbia University.
Cicero. John C. Rolfe, University of Pennsylvania.
Cicero as Philosopher. Nelson G. McCrea,
Columbia University.
Catullus. Karl P. Harrington, Wesley an University.
Lucretius and Epicureanism. George Depue
Hadzsits, University of Pennsylvania.
Ovid. Edward K. Rand, Harvard University.
Horace. Grant Showerman, University of Wisconsin.
Virgil. John William Mackail, Bdliol College, Oxford.
Seneca. Richard Mott Gummere, The William Penn
Charter Sclwol.
Roman Historians. G. Ferrero, Florence.
Martial. Paul Nixon, Bo-ivdoin College.
Platonism. Alfred Edward Taylor, St. Andrew's
University.
Aristotelianism. John L. Stocks, St. John's CoUege,
Oxford.
Stoicism. Robert Mark Wenley, Univarsity of Michigan.
Language and Philology. Roland G. Kent, University
of Pennsyhania.
Rhetoric and Literary Criticism.
24. Greek Religion. Walter W. Hyde, University of
Pennsylvania.
25. Roman Religion. Gordon J. Laing, McGill University,
AUTHORS AND TITLES
26. Mythologies. Jane Ellen Harrison, Newnham Collegef
Cambridge.
27. Theories Regarding the Immortality of the Soul.
Clifford H. Moore, Harvard University.
28. Stage Antiquities. James T. Allen, University of
California.
29. Greek Politics. Ernest Barker, King's College^
University of London.
30. Roman Politics. Frank Frost Abbott, Princeton
University.
31. Roman Law. Roscoe Pound, Harvard Law School.
32. Economics and Society. M. T. Rostovtzeff, University
of Wisconsin.
7,2,' Military and Maritime Antiquities. E. S. McCart-
ney, Northwestern University.
34. The Greek Fathers. Roy J. Deferrari, The Catho^
lie University of America,
35. Biology and Medicine. Henry Osbom Taylor,
New York.
36. Mathematics. David Eugene Smith, Teachers' College,
Columbia University.
37. Love of Nature. H. R. Fairclough, Leland Stanford
Junior University.
38. Astronomy and Astrology. Franz Cumont, Brussels.
39. The Fine Arts. Arthur Fairbanks, Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston.
40. Architecture. Alfred M. Brooks, Swarthmore College,
41. Engineering. Alexander P. Gest, Philadelphia.
42. Greek Private Life, Its Survivals. Charles Burton
Gulick, Harvard University.
43. Roman Private Life, Its Survivals. Walton B. Mc-
Daniel, University of Pennsylvania.
44. Folk Lore. Csunphell Bonner, University of Michigan.
45. Greek and Roman Education.
46. Christian Latin Writers. Andrew F. West, Princeton
University.
47. Roman Poetry and Its Influence upon European
Culture. Paul Shorey, University of Chicago.
48. Psychology.
49. Music.
50. Ancient and Modern Rome. Rodolfo Lanciani, Rome.
884
214
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