400 BC
ON ANCIENT MEDICINE
by Hippocrates
Translated by Francis Adams
Part 1
WHOEVER having undertaken to speak or write on Medicine, have
first laid down for themselves some hypothesis to their argument, such
as hot, or cold, or moist, or dry, or whatever else they choose
(thus reducing their subject within a narrow compass, and supposing
only one or two original causes of diseases or of death among
mankind), are all clearly mistaken in much that they say; and this
is the more reprehensible as relating to an art which all men avail
themselves of on the most important occasions, and the good
operators and practitioners in which they hold in especial honor.
For there are practitioners, some bad and some far otherwise, which,
if there had been no such thing as Medicine, and if nothing had been
investigated or found out in it, would not have been the case, but all
would have been equally unskilled and ignorant of it, and everything
concerning the sick would have been directed by chance. But now it
is not so; for, as in all the other arts, those who practise them
differ much from one another in dexterity and knowledge, so is it in
like manner with Medicine. Wherefore I have not thought that it
stood in need of an empty hypothesis, like those subjects which are
occult and dubious, in attempting to handle which it is necessary to
use some hypothesis; as, for example, with regard to things above us
and things below the earth; if any one should treat of these and
undertake to declare how they are constituted, the reader or hearer
could not find out, whether what is delivered be true or false; for
there is nothing which can be referred to in order to discover the
truth.
Part 2
But all these requisites belong of old to Medicine, and an origin
and way have been found out, by which many and elegant discoveries
have been made, during a length of time, and others will yet be
found out, if a person possessed of the proper ability, and knowing
those discoveries which have been made, should proceed from them to
prosecute his investigations. But whoever, rejecting and despising all
these, attempts to pursue another course and form of inquiry, and says
he has discovered anything, is deceived himself and deceives others,
for the thing is impossible. And for what reason it is impossible, I
will now endeavor to explain, by stating and showing what the art
really is. From this it will be manifest that discoveries cannot
possibly be made in any other way. And most especially, it appears
to me, that whoever treats of this art should treat of things which
are familiar to the common people. For of nothing else will such a one
have to inquire or treat, but of the diseases under which the common
people have labored, which diseases and the causes of their origin and
departure, their increase and decline, illiterate persons cannot
