d unconnected fragments. The works of Hippocrates have alone
escaped destruction; and by a singular circumstance there exists a great
gap after them as well as before them. The medical works from
Hippocrates to the establishment of the School of Alexandria, and those
of that school itself, are completely lost, except some quotations and
passages preserved in the later writers; so that the writings of
Hippocrates remain alone amongst the ruins of ancient medical
literature." Sydenham said of Hippocrates: "He it is whom we can never
duly praise," and refers to him as "that divine old man," and "the
Romulus of medicine, whose heaven was the empyrean of his art."

Hippocrates died in Thessaly, but at what age is uncertain, for
different authors have credited him with a lifetime of from eighty-five
to a hundred and nine years. By virtue of his fame, death for him was
not the Great Leveller.

Hippocrates had two sons, Thessalus and Draco; the former was physician
to Archelaus, King of Macedonia, the latter physician to the wife of
Alexander the Great. They were the founders of the School of Dogmatism
which was based mainly on the teaching and aphorisms of Hippocrates. The
Dogmatic Sect emphasized the importance of investigating not the obvious
but the underlying and hidden causes of disease and held undisputed sway
until the foundation of the Empirical Sect at Alexandria.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] _Vide_ "History of Gynaecology," by W. J. Stewart McKay. Bailliere,
Tindall and Cox, 1901.

[6] _Archiv fuer Geschichte der Medizin_, May, 1912.

CHAPTER IV.

PLATO, ARISTOTLE, THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA AND EMPIRICISM.

Plato--Aristotle--Alexandrian School--Its Origin--Its Influence--
Lithotomy--Herophilus--Erasistratus--Cleombrotus--Chrysippos--
Anatomy--Empiricism--Serapion of Alexandria.

Two very eminent philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, were influenced by
the teaching of Hippocrates.

_Plato_ (B.C. 427-347) was a profound moralist, and though possessed of
one of the keenest intellects of all time, did little to advance medical
science. He did not practise medicine, but studied it as a branch of
philosophy, and instead of observing and investigating, attempted to
solve the problems of health and disease by intuition and speculation.
His conceptions were inaccurate and fantastic.

He elaborated the humoral pathology of Hippocrates. The world, he
thought, was composed of four elements: _fire_ consistin