Hippocrates was born in the island of Cos (more anciently Meropis), an island of the Grecian archipelago of about one hundred square miles, probably about the year 460 B. C. Instructed in medicine by his father and other contemporary medical men, he traveled in various parts of Greece and Asia minor. He finally settled and practiced his profession at Cos, but died in Thessaly at the age of one hundred and four years (B. C. 357). Little is known of his personal history, other than that he was highly esteemed as a physician and an author, and that he raised the reputation of the medical school of Cos to a high degree. His works were studied and quoted by Plato. He was famous in his own time, and his works, some sixty in number, have in them many things that are not unworthy of consideration even after the lapse of twenty-two hundred years. Many of the works ascribed to Hippocrates are _not_ well authenticated. He divided the causes of diseases into two principal classes—the first consisting of the influence of seasons, climates, water, situations, etc.; the second of more personal causes, such as the food and exercise of the individual patient. His belief in the influence which different climates exert on the human constitution is very strongly expressed. He ascribes to this influence both the conformation of the body and the disposition of the mind, and hence accounts for the difference between the hardy Greek and the Asiatic. The four humors of the body (blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile) were regarded by him as the primary seats of disease; health was the result of the due combination (or crasis) of these humors, and illness was the consequence of a disturbance of this crasis. When a disease was progressing favorably these humors underwent a certain change (coction), which was the sign of returning health, as preparing the way for the expulsion of morbid matters, or crisis, these crises having a tendency to occur at definite periods, which were hence called critical days. His treatment of disease was cautious and what we now term expectant, _i. e._, it consisted chiefly, often solely, in attention to diet and regimen; and he was sometimes reproached with letting his patients die by doing nothing to keep them alive. His works written in Greek were at an early period translated into Arabic. They were first printed in Latin in 1525, at Rome. A complete edition in Greek bears a date a year later.