form with a definite structure, even so he conceived that the
atmosphere about him was full of invisible spirits; he accepted
the current superstitions of his time. Like the average Greeks of
his day, he even believed in such omens as those furnished by
inspecting the entrails of a fowl. These chance bits of biography
are weather- vanes of the mind of Democritus. They tend to
substantiate our conviction that Democritus must rank below
Anaxagoras as a devotee of pure science. But, after all, such
comparisons and estimates as this are utterly futile. The
essential fact for us is that here, in the fifth century before
our era, we find put forward the most penetrating guess as to the
constitution of matter that the history of ancient thought has to
present to us. In one direction, the avenue of progress is
barred; there will be no farther step that way till we come down
the centuries to the time of Dalton.


HIPPOCRATES AND GREEK MEDICINE

These studies of the constitution of matter have carried us to
the limits of the field of scientific imagination in antiquity;
let us now turn sharply and consider a department of science in
which theory joins hands with practicality. Let us witness the
beginnings of scientific therapeutics.

Medicine among the early Greeks, before the time of Hippocrates,
was a crude mixture of religion, necromancy, and mysticism.
Temples were erected to the god of medicine, aesculapius, and
sick persons made their way, or were carried, to these temples,
where they sought to gain the favor of the god by suitable
offerings, and learn the way to regain their health through
remedies or methods revealed to them in dreams by the god. When
the patient had been thus cured, he placed a tablet in the temple
describing his sickness, and telling by what method the god had
cured him. He again made suitable offerings at the temple, which
were sometimes in the form of gold or silver representations of
the diseased organ--a gold or silver model of a heart, hand,
foot, etc.

Nevertheless, despite this belief in the supernatural, many drugs
and healing lotions were employed, and the Greek physicians
possessed considerable skill in dressing wounds and bandaging.
But they did not depend upon these surgical dressings alone,
using with them certain appropriate prayers and incantations,
recited over the injured member at the time of applying the
dressings.

Even the very early Greeks had learned something of anatomy. The
daily contact with wounds and broken bones must of necessity lead
to a crude understanding of anatomy in general. The first Greek
anatomist, however, who is recognized as such, is said to have
been Alcmaeon. He is said to have made extensive dissections of
the lower animals, and to have described many hitherto unknown
structures, such as the optic nerve and the Eustachian canal--the
small tube leading into the throat from the ear. He is credited
with many unique explanations of natural phenomena, such as, for
example, the explanation that "hearing is produced by the hollow
bone behind the ear; for all hollow things are sonorous." He was
a rationalist, and he taught that the brain is the organ of mind.
The sources of our information about his work, however, are
unreliable.

Democedes, who lived in the sixth century B.C., is the first
physician of whom we have any trustworthy history. We learn from
Herodotus that he came from Croton to aegina, where, in
recognition of his skill, he was appointed medical officer of the
city. From aegina he was called to Athens at an increased salary,
and later was in charge of medical affairs in several other Greek
cities. He was finally called to Samos by the tyrant Polycrates,
who reigned there from about 536 to 522 B.C. But on the death of
Polycrates, who was murdered by the Persians, Democedes became a
slave. His fame as a physician, however, had reached the ears of
the Persian monarch, and shortly after his capture he was
permitted to show his skill upon King Darius himself. The Persian
monarch was suffering from a sprained ankle, which his Egyptian
surgeons had been unable to cure. Democedes not only cured the
injured member but used his influence in saving the lives of his
Egyptian rivals, who had been condemned to death by the king.

At another time he showed his skill by curing the queen, who was
suffering from a chronic abscess of long standing. This so
pleased the monarch that he offered him as a reward anything he
might desire, except his liberty. But the costly gifts of Darius
did not satisfy him so long as he remained a slave; and
determined to secure his freedom at any cost, he volunteered to
lead some Persian spies into his native country, promising to use
his influence in converting some of the leading men of his nation
to the Persian cause. Laden with the wealth that had been heaped
upon him by Darius, he set forth upon his mission, but upon
reaching his native city of Croton he threw off his mask,
renounced his Persian mission, and became once more a free Greek.

While the story of Democedes throws little light upon the medical
practices of the time, it shows that paid city medical officers
existed in Greece as early as the fifth and sixth centuries B.C.
Even then there were different "schools" of medicine, whose
disciples disagreed radically in their methods of treating
diseases; and there were also specialists in certain diseases,
quacks, and charlatans. Some physicians depended entirely upon
external lotions for healing all disorders; others were


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