Greek Medicine and the Greek Genius

Abstract

EVEN in these days of dwindling classical studies it is generally recognized that the Greeks of the Classical period made a unique contribution to the development of Western civilization in philosophy, in politics, in art, in literature of many different kinds. Surprisingly perhaps, the names of Homer, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and many others, are still household words. And because humanity has not yet found the answer to the questions they raised, the study of the Classics survives in spite of every obstacle put in their way by the unenlightened. But one is apt to dismiss the contribution of the Greeks in the fields of science as of merely historical interest; our own scientific discoveries have so obviously surpassed them, or at best, incorporated them. And as far as the actual theories are concerned that is largely true, but it was the Greeks who discovered the scientific spirit; indeed one might maintain that modern science itself owes its very existence to the rediscovery of the Greek spirit, together with the Greek texts, at the time of the Renaissance. Medicine is, or should be, both art and As Socrates gave a new direction to philosophy, so Hippocrates gave to medicine both a new direction and a new spirit which it has ever forgotten at its perilas it did for a thousand years and more after Galen. Hippocrates was able to make this contribution because he applied to medicine the same outlook and the same principles which his contemporaries were applying in other fields of endeavour. His writings are part and parcel of the general development of Greek humanism. It is customary to begin any account of Greek medicine with Homerthe account of anything Greek must begin with Homer-and to point out that we find in the epics one hundred and fifty different names for parts of the body, that various potions, powders, and poultices are administered to the Homeric heroes, and that one hundred and fortyseven wounds are described in the Iliad with tolerable surgical accuracy. But none of this, certainly, goes beyond what can easily be paralleled tenfold from the much older medical lore of Babylon or Egypt. The real contribution of is that, in the words of Professor Farrington, Homer created Humanism and Humanism created science. He means that in the area of human freedom is suddenly enlarged and that men apply their reason to an area of problems infinitely larger than anything that can be found in the Western world at the time or for a very long time to come, outside Greece. Primitive man attributes any event he cannot explain to conscious external agents; he peoples his world with invisible spirits who have to