of Physicians, a benefactor of both the ancient Universities and one of the earliest, ablest, most typical, and most exasperating of the English humanists, spent much energy on this work of translation for which his abilities peculiarly fitted him. He was responsible for no less than six important works of Galen, of which one, the De temperamentis et de inaequali intemperie, printed at Cambridge in 1521, was among the earliest books impressed in that town and is said to be the first printed in England for which Greek types were used. It has been honoured by reproduction in facsimile in modern times. Such works as these, purely literary efforts, had great vogue for a century and more, and were much in use in the Universities. These humanistic products sometimes produced, among the advocates of the new scientific method, a degree of fury which was only rivalled by that of some of the humanists themselves towards the translators from the Arabic. But these are now dead fires. As the clinical and scientific methods of teaching gained ground, textual studies receded in medical education, as Hippocrates and Galen themselves would have wished them to recede.

The texts of Hippocrates and Galen have now ceased to occupy a place in any medical curriculum. Yet all who know these writings, know too, not only that their spirit is still with us, but that the works themselves form the background of modern practice, and that their very phraseology is still in use at the bedside. Modern medicine may be truly described as in essence a creation of the Greeks. To realize the nature of our medical system, some knowledge of its Greek sources is essential. It would indeed be a bad day for medicine if ever this debt to the Greeks were forgotten, and the loss would be at least as much ethical as intellectual. But there is happily no fear of this, for the figure and spirit of Hippocrates are more real and living to-day than they have been since the great collapse of the Greek scientific intellect in the third and fourth centuries of the Christian era.

Charles Singer.

The author has to thank Mr. R. W. Livingstone, Dr. E. T. Withington, Prof. A. Platt, and Mr. J. D. Beazley for corrections and suggestions.

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[1] Since this paper was first written Euclid, Book I, in the Greek, has been edited with a commentary by Sir Thomas Heath (Cambridge Press, 1920). It is full of interest and instruction.

[2] See my paper on ‘The Socratic Doctrine of the Soul’. Proceedings of the British Academy, 1915-16, pp. 235 sqq.

[3] In the case of the parabola, the base (as distinct from the ‘erect side’) of the rectangle is what is called the abscissa (Gk. αποτεμνομενη, ‘cut off’) of the ordinate, and the rectangle itself is equal to the square on the ordinate. In the case of the central conics, the base of the rectangle is ‘the transverse side of the figure’ or the transverse diameter (the diameter of reference), and the rectangle is equal to the square on the diameter conjugate to the diameter of reference.

[4] This word primarily means an all-round athlete, a winner in all five of the sports constituting the πενταθλον, namely jumping, discus-throwing, running, wrestling, and boxing (or javelin-throwing).

[5] επι δε τουτοις Πυθαγορας την περι αυτην φιλοσοφιαν εις σχημα παιδειας ελευθερου μετεστησεν. {epi de toutois Pythagoras tên peri autên philosophian eis schêma paideias eleutherou metestêsen.} Procli Comment. Euclidis lib. I, Prolegom. II (p. 65, ed. Friedlein).

[6] The word Biology was introduced by Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus (1776-1837) in his Biologie oder die Philosophie der lebenden Natur, 6 vols., Göttingen, 1802-22, and was adopted by J.-B. de Lamarck (1744-1829) in his Hydrogéologie, Paris, 1802. It is probable that the first English use of the word in its modern sense is by Sir William Lawrence (1783-1867) in his work On the Physiology, Zoology, and Natural History of Man, London, 1819; there are earlier English uses of the word, however, contrasted with biography.

[7] The remains of Alcmaeon are given in H. Diel’s Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Berlin, 1903, p. 103. Alcmaeon is considered in the companion chapter on Greek Medicine.

[8] Especially the περι γυναικειης φυσιος, On the nature of woman, and the περι γυναικειων, On the diseases of women.

[9] περι ἑβδομαδων. The Greek text is lost. We have, however, an early and barbarous Latin translation, and there has recently been printed an Arabic commentary. G. Bergstrasser, Pseudogaleni in Hippocratis de septimanis commentarium ab Hunnino Q. F. arabice versum, Leipzig, 1914.

[10] περι νουσων δ.

[11] περι καρδιης.

[12] Especially in the περι γονης.

[13] The three works περι γονης, περι φυσιος παιδιου, περι νουσων δ, On generation, on the nature of the embryo, on diseases, book IV, form really one treatise on generation.

[14] περι φυσιος παιδιου, On the nature of the embryo, § 13. The same experience is described in the περι σαρκων, On the muscles.

[15] περι φυσιος παιδιου, On the nature of the embryo, § 29.

[16] περι φυσιος παιδιου, On the nature of the embryo, § 22.

[17] Ibid. § 23.

[18] It is possible that Theophrastus derived the word pericarp from Aristotle. Cp. De anima, ii. 1, 412 b 2. In the passage το φυλλον περικαρπιου σκεπασμα, το δε περικαρπιον καρπου, in the De anima the word does not, however, seem to have the full technical force that Theophrastus gives to it.

[19] Historia plantarum, i. 2, vi.

[20] Ibid. i. 1, iv.

[21] Historia plantarum, ii. 1, i.

[22] Historia plantarum, viii. 1, i.

[23] Nathaniel Highmore, A History of Generation, London, 1651.

[24] Marcello Malpighi, Anatome plantarum, London, 1675.

[25] Nehemiah Grew, Anatomy of Vegetables begun, London, 1672.

[26] Pliny, Naturalis historia, xiii. 4.

[27] The curious word ολυνθαζειν, here translated to use the wild fig, is from ολυνθος, a kind of wild fig which seldom ripens. The special meaning here given to the word is explained in another work of Theophrastus, De causis plantarum, ii. 9, xv. After describing caprification in figs, he says το δε επι των φοινικων συμβαινον ου ταυτον μεν, εχει δε τινα ὁμοιοτητα τουτω δι’ ὁ καλουσιν ολυνθαζειν αυτους {to de epi tôn phoinikôn symbainon ou tauton men, echei de tina homoiotêta toutô di’ ho kalousin olynthazein autous} ‘The same thing is not done with dates, but something analogous to it, whence this is called ολυνθαζειν’.

[28] Historia plantarum, ii. 8, iv.

[29] Herodotus i. 193.

[30] Historia plantarum, ii. 8, i.

[31] Ibid. ii. 8, ii.

[32] Historia plantarum, ii. 8, iv.

[33] Ibid. i. 1, ix.

[34] Ibid. iii. 18, x.

[35] De causis plantarum, ii. 23.

[36] Historia plantarum, i. 13, iii.

[37] See the companion chapter on Greek Medicine.

[38] The surviving fragments of the works of Crateuas have recently been printed by M. Wellmann as an appendix to the text of Dioscorides, De materia medica, 3 vols., Berlin, 1906-17, iii. pp. 144-6. The source and fate of his plant drawings are discussed in the same author’s Krateuas, Berlin, 1897.

[39] The manuscript in question is Med. Graec. 1 at what was the Royal Library at Vienna. It is known as the Constantinopolitanus. After the war it was taken to St. Mark’s at Venice, but either has been or is about to be restored to Vienna. A facsimile of this grand manuscript was published by Sijthoff, Leyden, 1906.

[40] The lady in question was Juliana Anicia, daughter of Anicius Olybrius, Emperor of the West in 472, and his wife Placidia, daughter of Valentinian III. Juliana was betrothed in 479 by the Eastern Emperor Zeno to Theodoric the Ostrogoth, but was married, probably in 487 when the manuscript was presented to her, to Areobindus, a high military officer under the Byzantine Emperor Anastasius.

[41] The importance of this manuscript as well as the position of Dioscorides as medical botanist is discussed by Charles Singer in an article ‘Greek Biology and the Rise of Modern Biology’, Studies in the History and Method of Science, vol. ii, Oxford, 1921.

[42] This manuscript is at the University Library at Leyden, where it is numbered Voss Q 9.

[43] A good instance of Galen’s teleological point of view is afforded by his classical description of the hand in the περι χρειας των εν ανθρωπου σωματι μοριων, On the uses of the parts of the body of man, i. 1. This passage is available in English in a tract by Thomas Bellott, London, 1840.

[44] The early European translations from the Arabic are tabulated with unparalleled learning by M. Steinschneider, ‘Die Europäischen Uebersetzungen aus dem Arabischen bis Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts’, in the Sitzungsberichte der kais. Akad. der Wissenschaften in Wien, cxlix and cli, Vienna, 1904 and 1905.

[45] C. H. Haskins, ‘The reception of Arabic science in England,’ English Historical Review, London, 1915, p. 56.

[46] Roger Bacon, Opus majus, edited by J. H. Bridges, 3 vols., London, 1897-1900. Vol. iii, p. 66.

[47] On the Aristotelian translations of Scott see A. H. Querfeld, Michael Scottus und seine Schrift, De secretis naturae, Leipzig, 1919; and C. H. Haskins, ‘Michael Scot and Frederick II’ in Isis, ii. 250, Brussels, 1922.

[48] J. G. Schneider, Aristotelis de animalibus historiae, Leipzig, 1811, p. cxxvi. L. Dittmeyer, Guilelmi Moerbekensis translatio commentationis Aristotelicae de generatione animalium, Dillingen, 1915. L. Dittmeyer, De animalibus historia, Leipzig, 1907.

[49] The subject of the Latin translations of Aristotle is traversed by A. and C. Jourdain, Recherches critiques sur l’âge des traductions latines d’Aristote, 2nd ed., Paris, 1843; M. Grabmann, Forschungen uber die lateinischen Aristoteles Ubersetzungen des XIII. Jahrhunderts, Münster i/W., 1916; and F. Wüstenfeld, Die Ubersetzungen arabischer Werke in das Lateinische seit dem XI. Jahrhundert, Göttingen, 1877.

[50] The enormous De Animalibus of Albert of Cologne is now available in an edition by H. Stadler, Albertus Magnus De Animalibus Libri XXVI nach der cölner Urschrift, 2 vols., Münster i/W., 1916-21. The quotation is translated from vol. i, pp. 465-6.

[51] Conrad’s work is conveniently edited by H. Schultz, Das Buch der Natur von Conrad von Megenberg, die erste Naturgeschichte in deutscher Sprache, in Neu-Hochdeutsche Sprache bearbeitet, Greifswald, 1897. Conrad’s work is based on that of Thomas of Cantimpré (1201-70).

[52] Hieronimo Fabrizio of Acquapendente, De formato foetu, Padua, 1604.

[53] William Harvey, Exercitationes de generatione animalium, London, 1651.

[54] Karl Ernst von Baer, Ueber die Entwickelungsgeschichte der Thiere, Königsberg, 1828-37.

[55] The works of Herophilus are lost. This fine passage has been preserved for us by Sextus Empiricus, a third-century physician, in his προς τοις μαθηματικους αιτιρρητικοι, which is in essence an attack on all positive philosophy. It is an entertaining fact that we should have to go to such a work for remains of the greatest anatomist of antiquity. The passage is in the section directed against ethical writers, xi. 50.

[56] The word φυσικος, though it passed over into Latin (Cicero) with the meaning naturalist, acquired the connotation of sorcerer among the later Greek writers. Perhaps the word physicianus was introduced to make a distinction from the charm-mongering physicus. In later Latin physicus and medicus are almost always interchangeable.

[57] This fragment has been published in vol. iii, part 1, of the Supplementum Aristotelicum by H. Diels as Anonymi Londinensis ex Aristotelis Iatricis Menonis et Aliis Medicis Eclogae, Berlin, 1893. See also H. Bekh and F. Spät, Anonymus Londinensis, Auszuge eines Unbekannten aus Aristoteles-Menons Handbuch der Medizin, Berlin, 1896.

[58] As we go to press there appears a preliminary account of the very remarkable Edwin Smith papyrus, see J. H. Breasted in Recueil d’études egyptologiques dédiées à la mémoire de Champollion, Paris 1922, and New York Historical Society Bulletin, 1922.

[59] It is tempting, also, to connect the Asclepian snake cult with the prominence of the serpent in Minoan religion.

[60] This word pronoia, as Galen explains (εις το Ἱπποκρατους προγνωστικον, K. xviii, B. p. 10), is not used in the philosophic sense, as when we ask whether the universe was made by chance or by pronoia, nor is it used quite in the modern sense of prognosis, though it includes that too. Pronoia in Hippocrates means knowing things about a patient before you are told them. See E. T. Withington, ‘Some Greek medical terms with reference to Luke and Liddell and Scott,’ Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine (Section of the History of Medicine), xiii, p. 124, London, 1920.

[61] Prognostics 1.

[62] There is a discussion of the relation of the Asclepiadae to temple practice in an article by E. T. Withington, ‘The Asclepiadae and the Priest of Asclepius,’ in Studies in the History and Method of Science, edited by Charles Singer, vol. ii, Oxford, 1921.

[63] The works of Anaximenes are lost. This phrase of his, however, is preserved by the later writer Aetios.

[64] For the work of these physicians see especially M. Wellmann, Fragmentsammlung der griechischen Aerzte, Bd. I, Berlin, 1901.

[65] Galen, περι ανατομικων εγχειρησεων, On anatomical preparations, § 1, K. II, p. 282.

[66] Historia animalium, iii. 3, where it is ascribed to Polybus. The same passage is, however, repeated twice in the Hippocratic writings, viz. in the περι φυσιος ανθρωπου, On the nature of man, Littré, vi. 58, and in the περι οστεων φυσιος, On the nature of bones, Littré, ix. 174.

[67] Παραγγελιαι, § 6.

[68] See Fig. 1.

[69] Translation by Professor Arthur Platt.

[70] It must, however, be admitted that in the Hippocratic collection are breaches of the oath, e. g. in the induction of abortion related in περι φυσιος παιδιου. There is evidence, however, that the author of this work was not a medical practitioner.

[71] Rome Urbinas 64, fo. 116.

[72] Kühlewein, i. 79, regards this as an interpolated passage.

[73] Littré, ii. 112; Kühlewein, i. 79. The texts vary: Kühlewein is followed except in the last sentence.

[74] Περι τεχνης, § 3.

[75] Περι νουσων α', § 6.

[76] A reference to dissection in the περι αρθρων, On the joints, § 1, appears to the present writer to be of Alexandrian date.

[77] They are to be found as an Appendix to Books I and III of the Epidemics and embedded in Book III.

[78] John Cheyne (1777-1836) described this type of respiration in the Dublin Hospital Reports, 1818, ii, p. 216. An extreme case of this condition had been described by Cheyne’s namesake George Cheyne (1671-1743) as the famous ‘Case of the Hon. Col. Townshend’ in his English Malady, London, 1733. William Stokes (1804-78) published his account of Cheyne-Stokes breathing in the Dublin Quarterly Journal of the Medical Sciences, 1846, ii, p. 73.

[79] The Epidaurian inscriptions are given by M. Fraenkel in the Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum IV, 951-6, and are discussed by Mary Hamilton (Mrs. Guy Dickins), Incubation, St. Andrews, 1906, from whose translation I have quoted. Further inscriptions are given by Cavvadias in the Archaiologike Ephemeris, 1918, p. 155 (issued 1921).

[80] We are almost told as much in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, § 1, a work probably composed about the end of the fourth century.

[81] Astley Paston Cooper, Treatise on Dislocations and Fractures of the Joints, London, 1822, and Observations on Fractures of the Neck and the Thighbone, &c., London, 1823.

[82] This famous manuscript is known as Laurentian, Plutarch 74, 7, and its figures have been reproduced by H. Schöne, Apollonius von Kitium, Leipzig, 1896.

[83] The first lines are the source of the famous lines in Goethe’s Faust:

[84] The extreme of treatment refers in the original to the extreme restriction of diet, ες ακριβειην, but the meaning of the Aphorism has always been taken as more generalized.

[85] The ancients knew almost nothing of infection as applied specifically to disease. All early peoples—including Greeks and Romans—believed in the transmission of qualities from object to object. Thus purity and impurity and good and bad luck were infections, and diseases were held to be infections in that sense. But there is little evidence in the belief of the special infectivity of disease as such in antiquity. Some few diseases are, however, unequivocally referred to as infectious in a limited number of passages, e. g. ophthalmia, scabies, and phthisis in the περι διαφορας πυρετων, On the differentiae of fevers, K. vii, p. 279. The references to infection in antiquity are detailed by C. and D. Singer, ‘The scientific position of Girolamo Fracastoro’, Annals of Medical History, vol. i, New York, 1917.

[86] K. F. H. Marx, Herophilus, ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Medizin, Karlsruhe, 1838.

[87] Galen, περι ανατομικων εγχειρησεων, On anatomical preparations, ix. 5 (last sentence).

[88] Galen, περι φλεβων και αρτηριων ανατομης, On the anatomy of veins and arteries, i.

[89] The quotation is from chapter xxxiii, line 44 of the Anonymus Londinensis. H. Diels, Anonymus Londinensis in the Supplementum Aristotelicum, vol. iii, pars 1, Berlin, 1893.

[90] Sanctorio Santorio, Oratio in archilyceo patavino anno 1612 habita; de medicina statica aphorismi. Venice, 1614.

[91] This is the only passage of Hegetor’s writing that has survived. It has been preserved in the work of Apollonius of Citium.

[92] Leyden Voss 4° 9^* of the sixth century is a fragment of this work.

[93] V. Rose, Sorani Ephesii vetus translatio Latina cum additis Graeci textus reliquiis, Leipzig, 1882; F. Weindler, Geschichte der gynäkologisch-anatomischen Abbildung, Dresden, 1908.

[94] The discovery and attribution of these figures is the work of K. Sudhoff. A bibliography of his writings on the subject will be found in a ‘Study in Early Renaissance Anatomy’ in C. Singer’s Studies in the History and Method of Science, vol. i, Oxford, 1917.

[95] First Latin edition Venice, 1552; first Greek edition Paris, 1554.

[96] e. g. περι κρασεως και δυναμεως των ἁπαντων φαρμακων and the φαρμακα.

[97] e. g. De dinamidiis Galeni, Secreta Hippocratis and many astrological tracts.

[98] Dissection of animals was practised at Salerno as early as the eleventh century.

[99] The sources of the anatomical knowledge of the Middle Ages are discussed in detail in the following works: R. R. von Töply, Studien zur Geschichte der Anatomie im Mittelalter, Vienna, 1898; K. Sudhoff, Tradition und Naturbeobachtung, Leipzig, 1907; and also numerous articles in the Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin und Naturwissenschaften; Charles Singer, ‘A Study in Early Renaissance Anatomy’, in Studies in the History and Method of Science, vol. i, Oxford, 1917.

[100] Benivieni’s notes were published posthumously. Some of the spurious Greek works of the Hippocratic collection have also case notes.

[101] Tusc. 1. 1. 2.

[102] Inst. Or. I. 1. 12.

[103] Goethe, Gespräche, 3. 387.

[104] Ibid., 3. 443.

[105] Wordsworth, Table-talk.

[106] Shelley, On the Manners of the Ancients.

[107] Mill, Dissertations, ii. 283 f.

[108] Macaulay, Life and Letters, i. 43.

[109] Homer, Iliad, vi. 466 ff. (with omissions: chiefly from the translation of Lang, Leaf, and Myers). It should be remembered that, of the three figures in this scene, the husband will be dead in a few days, while within a year the wife will be a slave and the child thrown from the city wall.

[110] Genesis xxi. 14 f.

[111] Iliad, xvi. 428 f.: ‘As vultures with crooked talons and curved beaks that upon some high crag fight, screaming loudly.’ Ibid. v. 770 f.: ‘As far as a man’s view ranges in the haze, as he sits on a point of outlook and gazes over the wine-dark sea, so far at a spring leap the loud-neighing horses of the gods.’

[112] Poetics, c. 23 (tr. Butcher).

[113] ‘Stranger, tell the Spartans that we lie here, obeying their words.’

[114] Phaedo, 118 B.

[115] fr. 95: ‘Star of evening, bringing all things that bright dawn has scattered, you bring the sheep, you bring the goat, you bring the child back to its mother.’

[116] Iliad, xxiv. 277 f. (with omissions).

[117] I have taken these quotations of Keats from Bradley, Oxford Lecture on Poetry, p. 238.

[118] Callimachus, Epigr. 20: ‘His father Philip laid here to rest his twelve-year old son, his high hope, Nicoteles.’

[119] Thuc. iv. 104, 105, 106 (tr. Jowett, mainly).

[120] The Greek Genius and its Meaning to us, pp. 74 ff.

[121] In these novels and in The Dynasts Mr. Hardy allows his personal views to depress one side of the scales: in his lesser novels he has often shown that he can hold the balance even. This distinction should be borne in mind in all the criticisms of his work, which I have ventured to make.

[122] Keats, Preface to Endymion.

[123] Hymn to Demeter, l. 2 ff. The translation is mainly from Pater, Greek Studies. ‘Whom, by the consent of far-seeing, deep-thundering Zeus, Aidoneus carried away, as she played with the deep-bosomed daughters of Ocean, gathering flowers in a meadow of soft grass and roses and crocus and fair violets and iris and hyacinths and the strange glory of the narcissus which the Earth, favouring the desire of Aidoneus, brought forth to snare the flower-like girl. A wonder it was to all, immortal gods and mortal men. A hundred blossoms grew up from the roots of it, and very sweet was its scent, and the broad sky above, and all the earth and the salt wave of the sea laughed to see it. She in wonder stretched out her two hands to take the lovely plaything: thereupon the wide-wayed earth opened in the Nysian plain and the king of the great nation of the dead sprang out with his immortal horses.’

[124] ll. 732 f. (tr. Murray).

[125] Vitruvius, De Architectura.

[126] Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis, xxxvi.

[127] Pausanias, Ἑλλαδος Περιηγησις.

[128] Sir Arthur Evans has drawn up an ingenious chronology of Early Minoan (2800-2200 B. C.), Middle Minoan (2200-1700 B. C.), and Late Minoan (1700-1200 B. C.). The evidence is almost entirely that of pottery discovered on the site. The whole question of the relations of Minoan to Mycenaean art, and of this archaic art to the earlier civilizations of Egypt and Chaldea, is very obscure and uncertain.

[129] The heraldic treatment of the lions is of Eastern origin. The Greeks had a tradition that the chieftains of Mycenae came from Lydia.

[130] Portions of these columns are now in the British Museum.

[131] The order, I may say for the uninitiated, means the complete ordonnance of the column, the architrave resting immediately on its capital, the frieze and the cornice. It is the final expression of the simple device of the post and lintel, of the beam resting on the heads of two or more posts; and there is little doubt that in its ultimate origin, the Order is the translation into stone of the details of a rudimentary wooden construction.

[132] Hellenistic Sculpture, by Guy Dickins, p. 85. The author, who wrote with something of the insight of the artist as well as the accurate knowledge of the scholar, died of wounds, on the Somme, in 1916.

[133] Vitruvius, iii. 1. The difficulty was, that if the triglyph was placed on the angle of the building (the practice of the Greeks) and the next triglyph was placed over the axis of the column, the metope (or panel) between these two triglyphs would be larger than the metopes between the triglyphs axial over the other columns. The Greeks solved it by reducing the width of the end intercolumniation, but later critics disliked this, and solved it by removing the end triglyph from the angle and placing it axial over the end column.

[134] Vitruvius gives this as the ‘aedes in antis’.

[135] Pro-style (colonnade in front).

[136] Amphipro-style (colonnade at both ends).

[137] Peripteral (single colonnade all round).

[138] Dipteral (double colonnade all round).

[139] Pseudo-dipteral (inner row of columns omitted).

[140] The Erechtheum was an exception.

[141] See Delphi, by Dr. Frederick Poulsen, p. 52. It is suggested that the Sacred Way was in existence before the shrines were built, and that its wanderings were necessitated by the gradients of the hillside. No sort of attempt, however, seems to have been made to correct this, or to treat it as an element of design.

[142] The Place Vendôme measures 450 ft. × 420 ft.; Grosvenor Square about 650 × 530; and Lincoln’s Inn Fields about 800 × 630, measured from wall to wall of buildings.

[143] Choisy, History of Architecture, vol. i, p. 298.