We also know now that Philolaos wrote on medicine,[742] and that, while apparently influenced by the theories of the Sicilian school, he opposed them from the Pythagorean standpoint. In particular, he said that our bodies were composed only of the warm, and did not participate in the cold. It was only after birth that the cold was introduced by respiration. The connexion of this with the old Pythagorean theory is obvious. Just as the Fire in the macrocosm draws in and limits the cold dark breath which surrounds the world (§ 53), so do our bodies inhale cold breath from outside. Philolaos made bile, blood, and phlegm the causes of disease; and, in accordance with the theory just mentioned, he had to deny that the phlegm was cold, as the Sicilian school held it was. Its etymology proved that it was warm. As Diels says, Philolaos strikes us as an “uninteresting eclectic” so far as his medical views are concerned.[743] We shall see, however, that it was just this preoccupation with the medicine of the Sicilian school that gave rise to some of the most striking developments of later Pythagoreanism. Footnote 742: It is a good illustration of the defective character of our tradition (Introd. § XIII.) that this was quite unknown till the publication of the extracts from Menon’s _Iatrika_ contained in the Anonymus Londinensis. The extract referring to Philolaos is given and discussed by Diels in _Hermes_, xxviii. pp. 417 sqq. Footnote 743: _Hermes_, _loc. cit._ [Sidenote: Plato and the Pythagoreans.] 140. Such, so far as we can see, was the historical Philolaos, and he is a sufficiently remarkable figure. He is usually, however, represented in a different light, and has even been spoken of as a “precursor of Copernicus.” To understand this, we shall have to consider for a little the story of what can only be called a literary conspiracy. Not till this has been exposed will it be possible to estimate the real importance of Philolaos and his immediate disciples. As we can see from the _Phaedo_ and the _Gorgias_, Plato was intimate with these men and was deeply impressed by their religious teaching, though it is plain too that he did not adopt it as his own faith. He was still more attracted by the scientific side of Pythagoreanism, and to the last this exercised a great influence on him. His own system in its final form had many points of contact with it, as he is careful to mark in the _Philebus_.[744] But, just because he stood so near it, he is apt to develop Pythagoreanism on lines of his own, which may or may not have commended themselves to Archytas, but are no guide to the views of Philolaos and Eurytos. He is not careful, however, to claim the authorship of his own improvements in the system. He did not believe that cosmology could be an exact science, and he is therefore quite willing to credit Timaios the Lokrian, or “ancient sages” generally, with theories which certainly had their birth in the Academy. Footnote 744: