One may appreciate the veneration
with which the Father of Medicine was regarded by the attribute "divine"
which was usually attached to his name. Listen to this for directness
and honesty of speech taken from the work on the joints characterized
by Littre as "the great surgical monument of antiquity": "I have
written this down deliberately, believing it is valuable to learn of
unsuccessful experiments, and to know the causes of their non-success."
The note of freedom is not less remarkable throughout the Hippocratic
writings, and it is not easy to understand how a man brought up and
practicing within the precincts of a famous AEsculapian temple could
have divorced himself so wholly from the superstitions and vagaries
of the cult. There are probably grounds for Pliny's suggestion that he
benefited by the receipts written in the temple, registered by the
sick cured of any disease. "Afterwards," Pliny goes on to remark in
his characteristic way, "hee professed that course of Physicke which is
called Clinice Wherby physicians found such sweetnesse that afterwards
there was no measure nor end of fees," ('Natural History,' XXIX, 1).
There is no reference in the Hippocratic writings to divination;
incubation sleep is not often mentioned, and charms, incantations or the
practice of astrology but rarely.
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