.
Before studying the work of Hippocrates, it is necessary to consider the
distinguishing features of the various schools of Greek philosophy.
Renouard shows that the principles of the various schools of medical
belief depended upon the three great Greek schools of Cosmogony.

Pythagoras believed in a Supreme Ruler of the Universe, and that spirits
animated all life, and existed even in minerals; he also believed in
preconceived purpose. With these views were associated the Dogmatic
School of Medicine, and the name of Hippocrates, and this belief
corresponds to modern vitalism.

Leucippus and Democritus, rejecting theology, considered vital action
secondary to the operation of the laws of matter, and believed that
atoms moved through pores in the body in such a way as to determine a
state of health or disease. With this philosophy was associated the
Medical School of Methodism, a system said to have been founded by
Asclepiades of Prusa (who lived in Rome in the first century before
Christ), and by his pupil Themison (B.C. 50). The third school of
medical thought, that of Empiricism, taught that experience was the only
teacher, and that it was idle to speculate upon remote causes. The
Empirics based these views upon the teaching of philosophers known as
Sceptics or Zetetics, followers of Parmenides and Pyrrho, who taught
that it was useless to fatigue the mind in endeavouring to comprehend
what is beyond its range. They were the precursors of modern
agnosticism.

The Eclectics, in a later age, formed another medical sect, and had no
definite system except that they made a selection of the views and
methods of Dogmatists, Methodists and Empirics.

The Greek philosophers as a class believed in a primary form of matter
out of which elements were formed, and the view held in regard to the
elements is expressed in Ovid's "Metamorphoses."[4]

"Nor those which elements we call abide,
Nor to this figure nor to that are ty'd:
For this eternal world is said of old
But four prolific principles to hold,
Four different bodies; two to heaven ascend,
And other two down to the centre tend.
Fire first, with wings expanded, mounts on high,
Pure, void of weight, and dwells in upper sky;
Then air, because unclogged, in empty space
Flies after fire, and claims the second place;
But weighty water, as her nature guides,
Lies on the lap of earth; and Mother Earth subsides.
All things