Fathers of Biology

by Charles McRae

"Of the constitutions of the year, the dry upon the whole are more healthy than the rainy, and attended with less mortality."

"Phthisis most commonly occurs between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five years."

"If one give to a person in fever the same food which is given to a person in good health, what is strength to the one is disease to the other."

"Such food as is most grateful, though not so wholesome, is to be preferred to that which is better, but distasteful."

"Life is short and the art long; the opportunity fleeting; experience fallacious and judgment difficult. The physician must not only do his duty himself, but must also make the patient, the attendants and the externals, co-operate."

Hippocrates appears to have travelled a great deal, and to have practised his art in many places far distant from his native island. A few traditions of what he did during his long life remain, but differences of opinion exist as to the truth of these stories.

Thus one story says that when Perdiccas, the King of Macedonia, was supposed to be dying of consumption, Hippocrates discovered the disorder to be love-sickness, and speedily effected a cure. The details of this story scarcely seem to be worthy of credence, more especially as similar legends have been told of entirely different persons belonging to widely different times. There are, however, some reasons for believing that Hippocrates visited the Macedonian court in the exercise of his professional duties, for he mentions in the course of his writings, among places which he had visited, several which were situated in Macedonia; and, further, his son Thessalus appears to have afterwards been court physician to Archelaus, King of Macedonia.

Another story connects the name of Hippocrates with the Great Plague which occurred at Athens in the time of the Peloponnesian war. It is said that Hippocrates advised the lighting of great fires with wood of some aromatic kind, probably some species of pine. These, being kindled all about the city, stayed the progress of the pestilence. Others besides Hippocrates are, however, famous for having successfully adopted this practice.

A third legend states that the King of Persia, pursuing the plan (which in the two celebrated instances of Themistocles and Pausanias had proved successful) of attracting to his side the most distinguished persons in Greece, wrote to Hippocrates asking him to pay a visit to his court, and that Hippocrates refused to go. Although the story is discarded by many scholars, it is worthy of note that Ctesias, a kinsman and contemporary of Hippocrates, is mentioned by Xenophon in the "Anabasis" as being in the service of the King of Persia. And, with regard to the refusal of the venerable physician to comply with the king's request, one cannot lose sight of the fact that such refusal was the only course consistent with the opinions he professed of a monarchical form of government.

After his various travels Hippocrates, as seems to be pretty generally admitted, spent the latter portion of his life in Thessaly, and died at Larissa at a very advanced age.