In keeping with all this is most of the surgical work of the collection. We are almost startled by the modern sound of the whole procedure as we run through the rough notebook κατ’ ἰητρεῖον, Concerning the Surgery, or the more elaborate treatise περὶ ἰητροῦ, On the Physician, where we may read minute directions for the preparation of the operating-room, and on such points as the management of light both artificial and natural, scrupulous cleanliness of the hands, the care and use of the instruments, with the special precautions needed when they are of iron, the decencies to be observed during the operation, the general method of bandaging, the placing of the patient, the use and abuse of splints, and the need for tidiness, order, and cleanliness. Many of these directions are enlarged upon in other surgical works of the collection, among which we find especially full instructions for bandaging and for the diagnosis and treatment of fractures and dislocations. A very fair representation of such a surgery as these works describe is to be found on a vase-painting of Ionic origin which is of the fifth century and therefore about contemporary with Hippocrates himself ([see fig. 5]). There are also several beautiful representations on vases of the actual processes of bandaging ([fig. 6]).
From MS. of APOLLONIUS OF KITIUM, of Ninth Century
Copied from a pre-Christian original
Fig. 3.
REDUCING DISLOCATED SHOULDER
Fig. 4.
REDUCING DISLOCATED JAW
Among the surgical procedures of which descriptions are to be found in the Hippocratic writings are the opening of the chest for the condition known as empyema (accumulation of pus within the pleura frequently following pneumonia), and trephining the skull in cases of fracture of that part—two fundamental operations of modern surgery. Surgical art has advanced enormously in our own times, yet a text-book containing much that is useful to this day might be prepared from these surgical contents of the collection alone.
When we pass to the works on Medicine, in the restricted sense, we enter into a region more difficult and perhaps even more fascinating. We are no longer dealing with simple lesions of known origin, but with the effects of disease and degeneration, of the essential character of which the Hippocratic writers could in the nature of the case know very little. Rigidly guarding themselves from any attempt to explain disease by more immediate and hypothetical causes and thus diverting the reader’s energies in the medically useless direction of vague speculation—the prevalent mental vice of the Greeks—the best of these physicians are content if they can put forward generalized conclusions from actually observed cases. Many of their thoughts have now become household words, and they have become so, largely as a direct heritage from these ancient physicians. But it must be remembered that ideas so familiar to us were with them the result of long and carefully recorded experience and are like nothing that we encounter in the medicine of other ancient nations. Such conclusions are best set forth perhaps in the wonderful book of the Aphorisms from which we may permit ourselves a few quotations: