To the careful scrutiny of facial appearances, the position, and other body-marks about the patient he attributed very great importance; in fact, so positive was he about these matters that he embodied the principal rules of semeiotics into aphorisms, to which, however, there came later so many exceptions that they lost much of their value. From certain passages in his book on _Prediction_, and from the book on _Treatment_, which is a part of the Hippocratic collection, it appears that it was the custom then of physicians to announce the probable issue of the disease upon the first or second visit,--a custom which still prevails in China and in Turkey, It gave the medical man the dignity of an oracle when right, but left him in a very awkward position when wrong. To Hippocrates we are indebted for the classification of sporadic, epidemic, and endemic forms, as well as for the division of disease into acute and chronic. Hippocrates wrote extensively on internal disease, including some particular forms of it, such as epilepsy, which was called the sacred disease; also fragments on diseases of girls, relating particularly to hysteria; also a book on the nature of woman, an extensive treatise on diseases of women, and a monograph on sterility. That Hippocrates was a remarkably close observer of disease as it appeared to him his books amply prove; in fact, they almost make one think that close observation is one of the lost arts, being only open to the objection that too much weight was attached to insignificant external appearances, speculation on which detracted from consideration of the serious feature of the case. His therapeutics, considering the crude information of the time, was a vast improvement on that which had preceded,{023} and really entitled him to his title of "Great Physician." Of external diseases and their surgical therapeutics he wrote fully: on _The Laboratory of the Surgeon_, dealing with dressings, bandaging, and operating; on _Fractures_; and on _Articulations and Dislocations_; showing much more anatomical knowledge than was possessed by his contemporaries. The _Mochlic_ was an abridgment of former treatises; in _Wounds of the Head_ he formulated the dictum concerning the possible danger of trifling wounds and the possible recovery from those most serious, so often ascribed to Sir Astlev Cooper. Other monographs, also, he wrote, on _Diseases of the Eye_, on _Fistula_, and on _Hoemorrhoids_. He described only a small number of operations, however, and all the Hippocratic writings on surgery would make but a very incomplete treatise as compared with those that belong to the next historical epoch; all of which we have to ascribe--in the main--to prejudice against dissection and ignorance of anatomy.