As Socrates devoted himself to ethics, and the application
of right thinking to good conduct, so Hippocrates insisted upon the
practical nature of the art, and in placing its highest good in the
benefit of the patient. Empiricism, experience, the collection of facts,
the evidence of the senses, the avoidance of philosophical speculations,
were the distinguishing features of Hippocratic medicine. One of the
most striking contributions of Hippocrates is the recognition that
diseases are only part of the processes of nature, that there is nothing
divine or sacred about them. With reference to epilepsy, which was
regarded as a sacred disease, he says, "It appears to me to be no wise
more divine nor more sacred than other diseases, but has a natural cause
from which it originates like other affections; men regard its nature
and cause as divine from ignorance." And in another place he remarks
that each disease has its own nature, and that no one arises without a
natural cause. He seems to have been the first to grasp the conception
of the great healing powers of nature. In his long experience with the
cures in the temples, he must have seen scores of instances in which the
god had worked the miracle through the vis medicatrix naturae; and
to the shrewd wisdom of his practical suggestions in treatment may be
attributed in large part the extraordinary vogue which the great Coan
has enjoyed for twenty-five centuries.
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