[227] See series of papers in illustration of it, published in the Medical Gazette for the year 1847, by Dr. Wardel. On one point I cannot agree with this writer; he says, the fever was of a continued character, whereas in all the cases which I met with it was decidedly remittent.
[228] VIII., 4.
[229] Institut., Orat. iii.
[230] De Perfect. in Virt.
[231] § 27.
[232] It cannot but appear singular that so distinguished a person as Robert Boyle should have found fault with Hippocrates for relating so many cases of which the issue was fatal. He says, “Revera penes me non parum Hippocratis auctoritate decedit, quod in scriptis suis tot ægrotorum epiphonema ipsos mortuos esse legerem.”—Exer. v., de Utilitate Philosoph. Exper., p. 192. On the other hand, Mart. Lister justly defends Hippocrates: “A me sane absit illa quorundam nuperorum scriptorum jactantia, qui nihil exhibent, nisi quod bonum eventum habuit; errores et infortunia caute abscondunt, aliter autem nobis profuit magnus Hippocrates, apud quem fere non nisi casus funesti occurrunt, ac si iidem potioris doctrinæ essent.”—Exercit. de Hydrope.
[233] Acut. Morb., iii., 17.
[234] Perspiratio dicta Hippocrati.
[235] By Nature, the ancient philosophers understood an immaterial principle diffused through all the works of creation, that is to say, an internal principle of motion and of rest, which presides over the growth and nourishment of all substances. It is well defined by Aristotle in different parts of his works. See De Anima, ii., 4; and Auscultationes Naturales, pluries. That truly learned and ingenious author Bishop Berkeley, in his “Siris,” describes nature as being mind so fuddled with matter as to have lost its consciousness. Probably, the distinction between a material and immaterial principle as the cause of the vital phenomena was not so well understood until after Plato and Aristotle had cultivated mental philosophy with so great success; for, as we shall see in the next section, Hippocrates seems to identify mind with heat, that is to say, he confounds the cause of motion and of change with its first instrument, or co-cause (συνάιτιον).
[236] See the references given by Gruner, Ackerman, and Littré.