In the examination and treatment of the sick the physicians of ancient Greece were highly trained. They paid very close attention to the patient’s account of his symptoms, but it was to the physical examination of the diseased body that they attached the greatest importance. They noted with extreme care the color and other peculiarities of the skin and mucous membranes, the condition of the abdomen, and the shape and movements of the thorax; they tested the patient’s temperature by placing the hand upon the body; and all the excretions were subjected to the closest scrutiny. By means of palpation they were able to determine not only the size of the liver and spleen, but also the changes which occur in the form of these organs in the course of certain diseases. They utilized succussion both as an aid to diagnosis and as a means of favoring the breaking through of pus into the bronchial tubes. They were familiar with the pleuritic friction sound and with the finest râles, which they compared to the creaking of leather or “the noise of boiling vinegar.” In their descriptions of these sounds it is distinctly stated that the examiner’s ear was kept tightly pressed against the patient’s chest. In speaking of the accounts of individual diseases which appear in the Hippocratic writings, Puschmann says that they are evidently based on cases actually observed in practice, and that they are admirably written. It is in the laws which they have laid down with regard to the treatment of disease, however, that the Hippocratic writers have gained their chief distinction, a distinction which will belong to them through all time. The physician should be the handy man of Nature, and he should strive to aid and to imitate her efforts to effect a cure. His first care should be to remove, so far as is possible, the causes of the disease; and then, in the conduct of the treatment, he should keep in view at all times the special circumstances of the case, giving closer attention to the patient than to the disease itself. In short, he should aim at being useful, or at least he should be careful not to do any harm. CHAPTER VIII BRIEF EXTRACTS FROM SOME OF THE HIPPOCRATIC WRITINGS