The Legacy of Greece: Essays By: Gilbert Murray, W. R. Inge, J. Burnet, Sir T. L. Heath, D'arcy W. Thompson, Charles Singer, R. W. Livingston, A. Toynbee, A. E. Zimmern, Percy Gardner, Sir Reginald Blomfield
Philosophy
The Legacy of Greece: Essays By: Gilbert Murray, W. R. Inge, J. Burnet, Sir T. L. Heath, D'arcy W. Thompson, Charles Singer, R. W. Livingston, A. Toynbee, A. E. Zimmern, Percy Gardner, Sir Reginald Blomfield
Greece -- Civilization
The views of Empedocles, and especially his doctrine that regarded the
heart as the main site of the pneuma, though rejected by the Coan school
as a whole, were not without influence on Ionia. Diogenes of Apollonia,
the philosopher of pneumatism, a late fifth-century writer who must have
been contemporary with Hippocrates the Great, himself made an
investigation of the blood vessels; and the influence of the same school
may be traced in a little work περι καρδιης {peri kardiês}, _On the
heart_, which is the best anatomical treatise of the Hippocratic
Collection. This work describes the aorta and the pulmonary artery as
well as the three valves at the root of each of the great vessels, and
it speaks of experiments to test their validity. It treats of the
pericardium and of the pericardial fluid and perhaps of the musculi
papillares, and contrasts the thickness of the walls of right and left
ventricles. The author considers that the left ventricle is empty of
blood--as indeed it is after death--and is the source of the innate heat
and of the absolute intelligence. These views fit in with the doctrines
of Empedocles, so that we may perhaps even venture to regard this work
as a surviving document of the Sicilian school. It is interesting to
observe that we have here the first hint of human dissection, for the
author tells us that the hearts of animals may be compared to that of
man. The distinction of having been the first to write on human anatomy,
as such, belongs however, probably to a later writer, Diocles, son of
Archidamus of Carystus, who lived in the fourth century B. C.[65]
[65] Galen, περι ανατομικων εγχειρησεων {peri anatomikôn
encheirêseôn}, _On anatomical preparations_, § 1, K. II, p. 282.
We may now turn to the Hippocratic Corpus as a whole. This collection
consists of about 60 or 70 separate works, written at various periods
and in various states of preservation. At best only a very small
proportion of them can be attributed to Hippocrates, but the discussion
of the general question of the 'genuineness' of the works is now
admitted to be futile, for it is certain that we have no criteria
whatever to determine whether or no a particular work be from the pen of
the Father of Medicine, and the most we can ever say of such a treatise
is that it appears to be of his school and in his spirit. Yet among the
great gifts of this collection to our time and to all time are two which
stand out above all others, the picture of a man, and the picture of a
method.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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