The following passages are taken from the article entitled “History of Medicine” in the Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th.  Edition, vol.  XVIII, pages 42-51.

“Hippocrates, called the ‘Father of Medicine,’ lived during the age of Pericles, (495-429 B.C.), and occupied as high a position in medicine as did the great philosophers, orators, and tragedians in their respective fields.

His high conception of the duties and position of the physician and the skill with which he manipulated the materials that were at hand, constituted two important characteristics of Hippocratic medicine.  Another was the recognition that disease, as well as health, is a process governed by what we call natural laws, learned by observation, and indicating the direction of recovery.  These views of the ’natural history of disease’ led to habits of minute observation and careful interpretation of symptoms, in which the Hippocratic school excelled and has been the model for all succeeding ages, so that even now the true method of clinical medicine may be said to be the method of Hippocrates.

One of the important doctrines of Hippocrates was the healing power of nature.  He did not teach that nature was sufficient to cure disease, but he recognized a natural process of the humours, at least in acute disease, being first of all crude, then passing through coction or digestion, and finally being expelled by resolution or crisis through one of the natural channels of the body.  The duty of the physician was to ’assist and not to hinder these changes, so that the sick man might conquer the disease with the help of the physician.’”

“Galen, the man from whom the greater part of modern European medicine has flowed, lived about 131 to 201 A.D.  He was equipped with all the anatomical, medical, and philosophical knowledge of his time; he had studied all kinds of natural curiosities and was in close touch with important political events; he possessed enormous industry, great practical sagacity, and unbounded literary fluency.  At that time there were numerous sects in the medical profession, various dogmatic systems prevailed in medical science, and the social standing of physicians was degraded.  He assumed the task of reforming the existing evils and restoring the unity of medicine as it had been understood by Hippocrates, at the same time elevating the dignity of medical practitioners.

In the explanation and healing of diseases he applied the science of physiology.  His theory was based upon the Hippocratic doctrine of humours, but he developed it with marvelous ingenuity.  He advocated that the normal condition of the body depended upon a proper proportion of the four elements, hot, cold, wet and dry.  The faulty proportions of the same gave rise, not to disease, but to the occasions for disease.  He laid equal stress upon the faulty composition or dysaemia of the blood.  He claimed that all diseases