IV
THE PHARMACY OF HIPPOCRATES.
When we search into the history of medicine and the commencement
of science, the first body of doctrine that we meet with is
the collection of writings attributed to Hippocrates. Science
ascends directly to that origin and there stops. Everything that
had been learned before the physician of Cos has perished; and,
curiously, there exists a great gap after him as well as before him. . . .
So that the writings of Hippocrates remain isolated amongst
the ruins of ancient medical literature.—Littré. Introduction to
the Translation of the Works of Hippocrates.
About eight hundred years separated the periods of Æsculapius and Hippocrates. During that long time the study of medicine in all its branches was proceeding in intimate association with the various philosophies for which Greece has always been famous. Intercourse between Greece and Egypt, Persia, India, and other countries brought into use a number of medicines, and probably these were introduced and made popular by the shopkeepers and the travelling doctors, market quacks as we should call them.
Leclerc has collected a list of nearly four hundred simples which he finds alluded to as remedies in the writings of Hippocrates. But these include various milks, wines, fruits, vegetables, flits, and other substances which we should hardly call drugs now. Omitting these and certain other substances which cannot be
