(Adams, ii, 779, cf.  Littre, iv, 628.)

In his ideal republic, Plato put the physician low enough, in the last stratum, indeed, but he has never been more honorably placed than in the picture of Athenian society given by this author in the “Symposium.”  Here the physician is shown as a cultivated gentleman, mixing in the best, if not always the most sober, society.  Eryximachus, the son of Acumenus, himself a physician, plays in this famous scene a typical Greek part(22a)—­a strong advocate of temperance in mind and body, deprecating, as a physician, excess in drink, he urged that conversation should be the order of the day and he had the honor of naming the subject—­“Praise of the God of Love.”  Incidentally Eryximachus gives his view of the nature of disease, and shows how deeply he was influenced by the views of Empedocles:”. . . so too in the body the good and healthy elements are to be indulged, and the bad elements and the elements of disease are not to be indulged, but discouraged.  And this is what the physician has to do, and in this the art of medicine consists:  for medicine may be regarded generally as the knowledge of the loves and desires of the body and how to satisfy them or not; and the best physician is he who is able to separate fair love from foul, or to convert one into the other; and he who knows how to eradicate and how to implant love, whichever is required, and can reconcile the most hostile elements in the constitution and make them loving friends, is a skilful practitioner.”

     (22a) Professor Gildersleeve’s view of Eryximachus is less
     favorable (Johns Hopkins University Circular, Baltimore,
     January, 1887).  Plato, iii, 186—­Jowett, I, 556.

The second great note in Greek medicine illustrates the directness with which they went to the very heart of the matter.  Out of mysticism, superstition and religious ritual the Greek went directly to nature and was the first to grasp the conception of medicine as an art based on accurate observation, and an integral part of the science of man.  What could be more striking than the phrase in “The Law,” “There are, in effect, two things, to know and to believe one knows; to know is science; to believe one knows is ignorance"?(23) But no single phrase in the writings can compare for directness with the famous aphorism which has gone into the literature of all lands:  “Life is short and Art is long; the Occasion fleeting, Experience fallacious, and Judgment difficult.”

     (23) Littre:  OEuvres d’Hippocrate, Vol.  IV, pp. 641-642.

Everywhere one finds a strong, clear common sense, which refuses to be entangled either in theological or philosophical speculations.  What Socrates did for philosophy Hippocrates may be said to have done for medicine.  As Socrates devoted himself to ethics, and the application of right thinking to good conduct, so Hippocrates insisted upon the practical nature of the art, and in placing its highest good