GENERAL INTRODUCTION

were followed, and does not mention them because they are irrelevant.

The charge of callousness may be dismissed. More serious is the attack on the fundamental principle of Hippocratic medicine: that "nature" alone can effect a cure, and that the only thing the physician can do is to allow nature a chance to work. Modern medical science has accepted this principle as an ultimate truth, but did the writer of the three treatises under discussion do his best to apply it? Did he really try to serve nature, and by doing so, conquer her? Houdart says that practically all the author of the Epidemics did was "to examine stools, urine, sweats, etc., to look therein for signs of 'ripening' (coction), to announce crises, and to pronounce sentences of death,"^1 in other words, that he looked on and did nothing. I have just pointed out that the silence of the Epidemics regarding treatment must not be taken to mean that no treatment was given, but it remains to be considered whether everything that could have been done was done. What remedies were used by the author of Regimen in Acute Diseases? They were:

(1) Purgatives and, probably, emetics.
(2) Fomentations and baths.
(3) (a) Barley-water and barley-gruel, in the preparation and administering of which great care was to be taken.
(b) Wine.
(c) Hydromel (a mixture of honey and water) and oxymel (a mixture of honey and vinegar).

^1 Op. cit., p. 247.