This portrait of Hippocrates, which is given in Leclerc’s “History of Medicine,” is stated to be copied from a medal in the collection of Fulvius Ursinus, a celebrated Italian connoisseur. It is believed that the medal was struck by the people of Cos at some long distant time in honour of their famous compatriot. A bust in the British Museum, found near Albano, among some ruins conjectured to have been the villa of Marcus Varro, is presumed to represent Hippocrates on the evidence of the likeness it bears to the head on this medal.
The medical views of Hippocrates do not concern us here except as they affect his pharmaceutical practice; but a very long chapter might be written on his pharmacy, that is to say, on the use he made of drugs in the treatment of disease. Galen believed that he made his preparations with his own hand, or at least superintended their preparation. Leclerc’s list of the medicaments mentioned as such in the works attributed to Hippocrates have been already quoted, and it will be found that after deducting the fruits and vegetables, the milks of cows, goats, asses, mules, sheep, and bitches, as well as other things which perhaps we should hardly reckon as medicaments, there remain between one hundred and two hundred drugs which are still found in our drug shops. There are a great many animal products, some copper and lead derivatives, alum, and the earths so much esteemed; but evidently the bulk of his materia medica was drawn from the vegetable kingdom.
Hippocrates was considerably interested in pharmacy. Galen makes him say, “We know the nature of medicaments and simples, and make many different preparations with them; some in one way, some in another. Some simples must be gathered early, some late; some we dry, some we crush, some we cook,” &c. He made fomentations, poultices, gargles, pessaries, katapotia (things to swallow, large pills), ointments, oils, cerates, collyria, looches, tablets, and inhalations, which he called perfumes. For quinsy, for example, he burned sulphur and asphalte with hyssop. He gave narcotics, including, it is supposed, the juice of the poppy and henbane seeds, and mandragora; purgatives, sudorifics, emetics, and enemas. His purgative drugs were generally drastic ones: the hellebores, elaterium, colocynth, scammony, thapsia, and a species of rhamnus.
Hippocrates describes methods for what he calls purging the head and the lungs, that is, by means of sneezing and coughing. He explains how he diminishes the acridity of spurge juice by dropping a little of it on a dried fig, whereby he gets a good remedy for dropsy. He has a medicine which he calls Tetragonon, or four-cornered. Galen conjectures that this was a tablet of crude antimony. Leclerc more reasonably suggests that it was a term for certain special kinds of lozenges, and points out that not long after Hippocrates physicians used a trochiscus trigonus, or three-cornered lozenge for another purpose.
Although he used many drugs, Hippocrates is especially insistent on Diet as the most important aid to health. He claims to have been the first physician who had written on this subject, and this assertion is confirmed by Plato, who, however, somewhat grimly commends the ancient doctors for neglecting this branch of treatment, for, he says, the modern ones have converted life into a tedious death. Barley water is repeatedly recommended by the physician of Cos, with various additions to suit the particular case under consideration. Oxymel is the usual associate, but dill, leeks, oil, salt, vinegar, and goats’ fat also figure.
Particular instructions are also given about the wine to be drunk, the kind, and the quantity of water with which it is to be diluted in spring, summer, autumn, and winter. In one place, at the end of the 3rd Book on Diet, a word is used which apparently means that persons fatigued with long labour should “drink unto gaiety” occasionally; but there is some doubt about the correct translation of that word.
V
FROM HIPPOCRATES TO GALEN.
Medicine is a science which hath been more professed than laboured, and yet more laboured than advanced; the labour having been, in my judgment, rather in circle than in progression. For I find much iteration, but small addition.—Bacon, “Advancement of Learning.”—Book 2.