igion of Hellas, which afforded complete
satisfaction to the requirements of sentiment, and yet left the
intelligence free to perform its destructive work; there were the
political conditions of a number of rival centres of intellect, of
a friction of forces, excluding the possibility of stagnation, and,
finally, of an order of state and society strict enough to curb the
excesses of 'children crying for the moon,' and elastic enough not to
hamper the soaring flight of superior minds.... We have already made
acquaintance with two of the sources from which the spirit of criticism
derived its nourishment--the metaphysical and dialectical discussions
practiced by the Eleatic philosophers, and the semi-historical method
which was applied to the myths by Hecataeus and Herodotus. A third
source is to be traced to the schools of the physicians. These aimed at
eliminating the arbitrary element from the view and knowledge of nature,
the beginnings of which were bound up with it in a greater or less
degree, though practically without exception and by the force of an
inner necessity. A knowledge of medicine was destined to correct that
defect, and we shall mark the growth of its most precious fruits in the
increased power of observation and the counterpoise it offered to hasty
generalizations, as well as in the confidence which learnt to reject
untenable fictions, whether produced by luxuriant imagination or by
a priori speculations, on the similar ground of self-reliant
sense-perception."(3)

(3) Gomperz: Greek Thinkers, Vol. I, p. 276.

The nature philosophers of the Ionian days did not contribute much
to medicine proper, but their spirit and their outlook upon nature
influenced its students profoundly. Their bold generalizations on the
nature of matter and of the elements are still the wonder of chemists.
We may trace to one of them, Anaximenes, who regarded air as the primary
principle, the doctrine of the "pneuma," or the breath of life--the
psychic force which animates the body and leaves it at death--"Our
soul being air, holds us together." Of another, the famous Heraclitus,
possibly a physician, the existing fragments do not relate specially to
medicine; but to the philosopher of fire may be traced the doctrine of
heat and moisture, and their antitheses, which influenced practice
for many centuries. There is evidence in the Hippocratic treatise peri
sarkwn of an attempt to apply this doctrine to the human body. The
f