"
(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.
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