Physic and Physicians 
AS DEPICTED IN PLATO. 
Read before the JoJms Hopkins Hospital Historical Chib, 
December 14, iSgs. 
BY 
WILLIAM OSLERCM.D., F.R.C.P. (Lond.), 
Professor of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, 
Baltimore. 
[Reprinted from the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 
of February q and 16, 1893.] 
BOSTON: 
DAMRELL & UPHAM, PUBLISHERS, 
283 Washington Street. 
1893, PHYSIC AND PHYSICIANS AS DEPICTED 
IN PLATO. 
Odr Historical Club had under consideration last 
winter the subject of Greek Medicine. After intro- 
ductory remarks and a description of the AEsculapian 
temples and worship by Dr. Welch, we proceeded to a 
systematic study of the Hippocratic writings, taking up 
in order, as found in them, medicine, hygiene, surgery, 
and gynascology. Among much of interest which we 
gleaned, not the least important was the knowledge 
that as an art, medicine had made, even before Hippoc- 
rates, great progress, as much almost as was possible 
without a basis in the sciences of anatomy and physi- 
ology. Minds inquisitive, acute, and independent had 
been studying the problems of nature and of man ; and 
several among the pre-Socratic philosophers had been 
distinguished physicians, notably, Pythagoras, Emped- 
ocles, and Democritus. Unfortunately we know but 
little of their views, or even the subjects in medicine on 
which they wrote. In the case of Democritus, how- 
ever, Diogenes Laertius has preserved a list of his 
medical writings, which intensifies the regret at the 
Joss of the works of this great man, the title of one of 
whose essays, “On Those who are Attacked with 
Cough after Illness ” indicates a critical observation of 
disease, which Daremberg seems unwilling to allow to 
the pre-Hippocratic philosopher-physicians. 
We gathered also that in the golden age of Greece, 
medicine had, as to-day, a triple relationship, with 
science, with gymnastics, and with theology. We can 
imagine an Athenian father of the middle of the fourth 
century worried about the enfeebled health of one of his 
growing lads, asking the advice of Hippocrates about a 
suspicious cough, or sending him to the palaestra of 
Taureas for a systematic course in gymnastics; or, as 
Socrates advised, “ when human skill was exhausted ” 
asking the assistance of the divine Apollo, through his 
son, the “ hero-physician,” Aesculapius, at his temple 
in Epidaurus or at Athens itself. Could the Greek 
live over his parental troubles at the end of the nine- 2 
teenth century he would get a more exact diagnosis 
and a more rational treatment; he might travel far to 
find so eminent a “ professor ” of gymnastics as Miccus 
for his boy, and in Christian science or faith-healing he 
would find our bastard substitute for the stately and 
gracious worship of the ./Esculapian temple.1 
From the Hippocratic writings alone we have a very 
imperfect knowledge of the state of medicine in the 
most brilliant period of Grecian history; and many 
details relating to the character and to the life of phy- 
sicians are gleaned only from secular authors. So 
much of the daily life of a civilized community relates 
to problems of health and disease that the great 
writers of every age of necessity throw an important 
side-light, not only on the opinions of the people on 
these questions, but often on the condition of special 
knowledge in various branches. Thus, as Dr. Billings 
has just told us, a considerable literature already illus- 
trates the medical knowledge of Shakespeare, from 
whose doctors, apothecaries, and mad-folk much may 
be gathered as to the state of the profession in the lat- 
ter part of the sixteenth century. So also the satire of 
Moliere, malicious though it be, has preserved for us 
phases of medical life in the seventeenth century, for 
which we scan in vain the strictly medical writings of 
that period; and writers of our own times, like George 
Eliot, have told for future generations in a character 
such as Lydgate, the little every-day details of the 
struggles and aspirations of the profession of this cen- 
tury, of which we find no account whatever in the files 
of the Lancet. ' 
We are fortunate in having had preserved the writ- 
ings of the two most famous of the Greek philosophers. 
The great idealist, Plato, whose “contemplation of all 
time and all existence” was more searching than his 
predecessors, fuller than any of his disciples; and the 
great realist, Aristotle, to whose memory every depart- 
ment of knowledge still pays homage, and who has 
swayed the master-minds of twenty-two centuries. 
From the writings of both much may be gathered about 
Greek physic and physicians ; and 1 propose this even- 
ing to give you what I have culled from the “ Dialogues 
of Plato.” I shall first speak of his physiological and 
pathological speculations; then I shall refer to the 
many interesting allusions to, and analogies drawn 
1 For an account of “iEsculapius at Epidaurus and Athens’’see 
Dyer’s “Gods of Greece” (MacMillan, 1891), a chapter which con- 
tains also an excellent discussion on the relation of secular to priestly 
medicine. In Chapter 111 of Pater’s delightiul story, “ Marius the 
Epicurean,” is a description of one of the Roman iEsculapia, and an 
account of the method of procedure in the “ cure,” the ridiculous as- 
pects of which are so graphically described in the “ Piutus ” of Aris- 
tophanes. 3 
from, medicine and physicians; and, lastly, I shall try 
to estimate from the “ Dialogues ” the social standing 
of the Greek doctor, and shall speak on other points 
which bear upon the general condition of the profes- 
sion. The quotations are made in every instance 
from Professor Jowett’s translation, either the first 
edition, 1871, or the third, 1892.2 
I. 
To our enlightened minds the anatomy and physiol- 
ogy of Plato are crude and imperfect; as much or 
even more so than those of Hippocrates. He con- 
ceived the elements to be made up of bodies in the 
form of triangles, the different varieties and combina- 
tions of which accounted for the existence of the four 
elementary bodies of Empedocles fire, earth, water, 
and air. The differences in the elementary bodies are 
due to differences in the size and arrangement of the 
elementary triangles, which, like the atoms of the 
atomist, are too small to be visible. Marrow had the 
most perfect of the elementary triangles, and from it 
bone, flesh, and the other structures of the body were 
made. “ God took such of the primary triangles as 
were straight and smooth, and were adapted by their 
perfection to produce fire and water, and air and earth; 
these, I say, he separated from their kinds, and min- 
gling them in due proportions with one another, made 
the marrow out of them to be a universal seed of the 
whole race of mankind; and in this seed he then 
planted and,enclosed the souls, and in the original dis- 
tribution gave to the marrow as many and various 
forms as the different kinds of souls were hereafter to 
receive. That which, like a field, was to receive the 
divine seed, he made round every way, and called that 
portion of the marrow brain, intending that, when an 
animal was perfected, the vessel containing this sub- 
stance should be the head; but that which was in- 
tended to contain the remaining and mortal part of the 
soul he distributed into figures at once round and elon- 
gated, and he called them all by the name ‘marrow’; 
and to these, as to anchors, fastening the bonds of the 
whole soul, he proceeded to fashion around them the 
entire framework of our body, constructing for the 
marrow, first of all, a complete covering of bone.” 3 
The account of the structure of bone and flesh, and of 
functions of respiration, digestion, and circulation is 
2 The Dialogues of Plato, translated into English by B. Jewett, 
M.A., Master of Balliol College, Oxford, At the Clarendon press; 
first edition, 1871; third edition, 1892. 
8 Timaeus. 4 
unintelligible to our modern notions. Plato knew that 
the blood was in constant motion ; in speaking of in- 
spiration and expiration, and the network of fire which 
interpenetrates the body, he says : “ For when the 
respiration is going in and out, and the fire, which is 
fast bound within, follows it, and ever and anon mov- 
ing to and fro enters the belly and reaches the meat 
and drink, it dissolves them, and dividing them into 
small portions, and guiding them through the passages 
where it goes, pumps them as from a fountain into the 
channels of the veins, undmakes the stream of the veins 
flow through the body as through a conduit.” A com- 
plete circulation was unknown ; but Plato understood 
fully that the blood was the source of nourishment, 
“ the liquid itself we call blood, which nourishes the 
flesh and the whole body, whence all parts are watered 
and empty spaces filled.” In the young, the triangles, 
or in modern parlance we would say the atoms, are 
new, and are compared to the keel of a vessel just off 
the stocks. They are locked firmly together, but form 
a soft and delicate mass freshly made of marrow and 
nourished on milk. The process of digestion is de- 
scribed as a struggle between the triangles out of which 
the meats and drinks are composed, and those of the 
bodily frame ; and as the former are older and weaker 
the newer triangles of the body cut them up, and in 
this way the animal grows great, being nourished by 
a multitude of similar particles. The triangles are in 
constant fluctuation and change, and in the “ Sympo- 
sium” Socrates makes Diotima say, “A man is called 
the same, and yet in the short interval which elapses 
between youth and age, and in which every animal is 
said to have life and identity, he is undergoing a per- 
petual process of loss and reparation hair, flesh, 
bones, and the whole body are always changing.” 
The description of senility, euthanasia, and death is 
worth quoting : “ But when the roots of the triangles 
are loosened by having undergone many conflicts with 
many things in the course of time, they are no longer 
able to cut or assimilate the food which enters, but are 
themselves easily divided by the bodies which come in 
from without. In this way every animal is overcome 
and decays, and this affection is called old age. And 
at last, when the bonds by which the triangles of the 
marrow are united no longer hold, and are parted by 
the strain of existence, they in turn loosen the bonds 
of the soul, and she, obtaining a natural release, flies 
away with joy. For that which takes place according 
to nature is pleasant, but that which is contrary to na- 
ture is painful. And thus death, if caused by disease or produced by wounds, is painful and violent; but 
that sort of death which comes with old age and fulfils 
the debt of nature is the easiest of deaths, and is ac- 
companied with pleasure rather than with pain.” 
The mode of origin and the nature of disease, as 
described in the “ Timaeus,” are in keeping with this 
primitive and imperfect science. The diseases of the 
body arise when any one of the four elements is out of 
place, or when the blood, sinews and flesh are produced 
in a wrong order. Much influence is attributed to the 
various kinds of bile. The worst of all diseases, he 
thinks, are those of the spinal marrow, in which the 
whole course of the body is reversed. Other diseases 
are produced by disorders of respiration ; as by phlegm 
“ when detained within by reason of the air bubbles.” 
This, if mingled with black bile and dispersed about 
the courses of the head produces epilepsy, attacks of 
which during sleep, he says, are not so severe, but 
when it assails those who are awake it is hard to be 
got rid of, and “ being an affection of a sacred part, is 
most justly called sacred (morbus sacer).” Of other dis- 
orders, excess of fire causes a continuous fever; of air, 
quotidian fever ; of water, which is a more sluggish 
element than either fire or air, tertian fever; of earth, 
the most sluggish element of the four, is only purged 
away in a four-fold period, that is in a quartan fever. 
The psychology of Plato, in contrast to his anatomy 
and physiology has a strangely modern savor, and the 
three-fold division of the mind into reason, spirit and 
appetite, represents very much the mental types recog- 
nized by students of the present day. The rational, 
immortal principle of the soul “ the golden cord of 
reason ” dwells in the brain, “and inasmuch as we are 
a plant not of earthly but of heavenly growth, raises us 
from earth to our kindred who are in heaven.” The 
mortal soul consists of two parts; the one with which 
man “ loves and hungers and thirsts, and feels the flut- 
terings of any other desire ” is placed between the 
midriff and the boundary of the navel ; the other, pas- 
sion or spirit, is situated in the breast between the 
midriff and the neck, “ in order that it might be under 
the rule of reason and might join with it in controlling 
and restraining the desires when they are no longer 
willing of their own accord to obey the word of com- 
mand issuing from the citadel.” 
No more graphic picture of the struggle between 
the rational and appetitive parts of the soul has ever 
been given than in the comparison of man to a char- 
ioteer driving a pair of winged horses, one of which is 
noble and of noble breed; the other ignoble and of 6 
ignoble breed, so that “ the driving of them of neces- 
sity gives a great deal of trouble to him.” 
The comparison of the mind of man to a block of 
wax, “ which is of different sizes in different men; 
harder, moister and having more or less of purity in 
one than another, and in some of an intermediate qual- 
ity,” is one of the happiest of Plato’s conceptions. 
This wax tablet is a gift of Memory, the mother of 
the Muses; “and when we wish to remember any- 
thing which we have seen, or heard or thought in our 
own minds, we hold the wax to the perceptions and 
thoughts, and in that material receive the impression 
of them as from the seal of a ring; and that we re- 
member and know what is imprinted as long as the 
image lasts; but when the image is effaced, or cannot 
be taken, then we forget and do not know.” 4 
Another especially fortunate comparison is that of 
the mind to an aviary which is gradually occupied by 
different kinds of birds, which correspond to the var- 
ieties of knowledge. When we were children the 
aviary was empty, and as we grow up we go about 
‘ catching ’ the various kinds of knowledge. 
Plato recognized, in the “ Timaeus” two kinds of 
mental disease, to wit, madness and ignorance. He 
has the notion advocated by advanced psychologists 
to-day, that much of the prevalent vice is due to an ill 
disposition of the body, and is involuntary ; “ for no 
man is voluntarily bad; but the bad become bad by 
reason of ill disposition of the body and bad education, 
things which are hateful to every man, and happen to 
him against his will.” A fuller discussion of the 
theorem that madness and the want of sense are the 
same is found in the “ Alcibiades.” (II) The different 
kinds of want of sense are very graphically described: 
Socrates. In like manner men differ in regard to want 
of sense. Those who are most out of their wits we call 
“ madmen,” while we term those who are less far gone 
“ stupid,” or “ idiotic,” or if we prefer gentle language, 
describe them as “ romantic ” or “ simple-minded,” or again 
as “ innocent,” or “ inexperienced,” or “ foolish.” You may 
even find other names if you seek for them, but by all of 
them lack of sense is intended. They only differ as one 
art appears to us to differ from another, or one disease 
from another. 
There is a shrewd remark in the “ Republic” (VI, 
491), “that the most gifted minds, when they are ill- 
educated, become pre-eminently bad. Do not great 
crimes and the spirit of pure evil spring out of a ful- 
ness of nature ruined by education rather than from 
4 Thesotetus. 7 
any inferiority, whereas weak natures are scarcely 
capable of any very great good or very great evil.” 
In the“ Phtedrus ” there is recognized a form of mad- 
ness which is a divine gift and a source of the chiefest 
blessings granted to man. Of this there are four kinds 
prophecy, inspiration, poetry, and love. That in- 
definable something which makes the poet as contrasted 
with the rhymster and which is above and beyond all 
art, is well characterized in the following sentence : 
“ But he who, having no touch of the Muse’s madness 
in his soul, comes to the door and thinks that he will 
get into the temple by the help of art he, I say, and 
his poetry are admitted. The sane man disappears 
and is nowhere when he enters into rivalry with a 
madman.” 5 Certain crimes, too, are definitely recog- 
nized #s manifestations of insanity; in the “Laws” 
the incurable criminal is thus addressed: “Oh, sir, the 
impulse which moves you to rob temples is not an 
ordinary human malady, nor yet the visitation of 
Heaven, but a madness which is begotten in man 
from ancient and unexpiated crimes of his race.” In 
the “ Laws,” too, it is stated that there are many sorts 
of madness, some arising out of disease, and others 
originating in an evil and passionate temperament, and 
are increased by bad education. Respecting the care 
of the insane it is stated that a madman shall not be 
at large in the city, but his relations shall keep him at 
home in any way they can, or if not, certain fines are 
mentioned. 
The greatest aid in the prevention of disease is to 
preserve the due proportion of mind and body, “ for 
there is no proportion or disproportion more produc- 
tive of health and disease, and virtue and vice, than 
that between soul and body.” In the double nature 
of the living being if there is in this compound an 
impassioned soul more powerful than the body, “ that 
soul, I say, convulses and fills with disorders the whole 
inner nature of man ; and when eager in the pursuit 
of some sort of learning or study, causes wasting ; or 
again, when teaching or disputing in private or in public 
and considerations and controversies arise, inflames 
and dissolves the composite form of man and intro- 
duces rheums ; and the nature of this phenomenon is 
not understood by most professors of medicine, who 
ascribe it to the opposite of the real cause. • . . Body 
and mind should both be equally exercised to protect 
against this disproportion, and we should not move the 
body without the soul or the soul without the body. In 
5 “ Not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of inspiration 
and genius.” Apology. 8 
this way they will be on their guard against each other, 
and be healthy and well balanced.” 6 He urges the 
mathematician to practise gymnastics, and the gymnast 
to cultivate music and philosophy. 
The modes of treatment advised are simple, and it 
is evident that Plato had not much faith in medicines. 
Professor Jowett’s commentary is here worth quoting: 
“ Plato is still the enemy of the purgative treatment 
of physicians, which, except in extreme cases, no man 
of sense will ever adopt. For, as he adds, with an 
insight into the truth, ‘ every disease is akin to the 
nature of the living being and is only irritated by 
stimulants.’ He is of opinion that nature should be 
left to herself, and is inclined to think that physicians 
are in vain (c. ‘Laws,’ VI, 761 C, where he says that 
warm baths would be more beneficial to the limbs of 
the aged rustic than the prescriptions of a not over- 
wise doctor). If he seems to be extreme in his con- 
demnation of medicine and to rely too much on diet 
and exercise, he might appeal to nearly all the best 
physicians of our own age in support of his opinions 
who often speak to their patients of the worthlessness 
of drugs. For we ourselves are sceptical about medicine, 
and very unwilling to submit to the purgative treat- 
ment of physicians. May we not claim for Plato an 
anticipation of modern ideas as about some questions 
of astronomy and physics, so also about medicine ? As 
in the ‘Charmides’ (156, 7) he tells us that the body 
cannot be cured without the soul, so in the ‘Timaeus’ 
he strongly asserts the sympathy of soul and body ; 
any defect of either is the occasion of the greatest dis- 
cord and disproportion in the other. Here, too, may be 
a presentiment that in the medicine of the future the 
interdependence of mind and body will be more fully 
recognized, and that the influence of the one over the 
other may be exerted in a manner which is not now 
thought possible.” 
The effect of the purgative method to which Plato was 
so opposed is probably referred to in the following 
passage. “ When a man goes of his own accord to a 
doctor’s shop and takes medicine, is he not quite aware 
that soon and for many days afterwards, he will be in 
a state of body which he would rather die than accept 
as a permanent condition of his life ? ” 
It is somewhat remarkable that nowhere in the 
“ Dialogues ” is any reference made to the method of 
healing at the HUsculapian temples. The comments 
upon physic and physicians are made without allusion 
to these institutions. Hippocrates and other practitioners 
c Timseus. 9 
at Athens were probably secular Asclepiads, but as 
Dyer remarks, “ in spite of the severance the doctors 
kept in touch with the worship of .ZEsculapius, and the 
priests in his temples did not scorn such secular know- 
ledge as they could gain from lay practitioners.” 7 
So much for the general conception of the structure 
and functions of the body, in order and disorder, as 
conceived by Plato. Were nothing more to be gleaned, 
the thoughts on these questions of one of the greatest 
minds of what was intellectually the most brilliant 
period of the race, would be of interest, but scattered 
throughout his writings are innumerable little obiter 
dicta, which indicate a profound knowledge of that 
side of human nature which turns uppermost when the 
machinery is out of gear. There are, in addition, many 
charming analogies drawn from medicine, and many 
acute suggestions, some of which have a nineteenth- 
century flavor. The noble pilot and the wise physician 
who, as Nestor remarks, “is worth many another 
man,” furnish some of the most striking illustrations of 
the “ Dialogues.” 
One of the most admirable definitions of the Art of 
Medicine I selected as a rubric with which to grace ray 
text-book, “ And 1 said of medicine, that this is an Art 
which considers the constitution of the patient, and has 
principles of action and reasons in each case.” Or, 
again, the comprehensive view taken in the statement, 
“ There is one science of medicine which is concerned 
with the inspection of health equally in all times, 
present, past and future.” 
Plato gives a delicious account of the origin of the 
modern medicine, as contrasted with the art of the 
guild of Asclepius.8 
11. 
Well, T said, and to require the help of medicine, not 
when a wound has to be cured, or on occasion of an epide- 
mic, but just because by indolence and a habit of life such 
as we have been describing, men fill themselves with waters 
and winds, as if their bodies were a marsh, compelling the 
ingenious sons of Asclepius to find more names for disease, 
such as flatulence and catarrh; is not this, too, a disgrace? 
Yes, he said, they do certainly give very strange and 
new-fangled names to diseases. 
Yes, 1 said, and I do not believe there were any such 
diseases in the days of Asclepius; and this I infer, from 
the circumstance that the hero Eurypylus, after he has been 
wounded in Homer, drinks a posset of Pramnian wine well 
7 The Gods of Greece 
8 Republic, iii. 10 
besprinkled with barley-meal and grated cheese, which are 
certainly inflammatory, and yet the sons of Asclepius who 
were at the Trojan war do not blame the damsel who gives 
him the drink, or rebuke Fatroclus, who is treating his case. 
Well, he said, that was surely an extraordinary drink to 
be given to a person in his condition. 
Not so extraordinary, 1 replied, if you bear in mind that 
in former days, as is commonly said, before the time of 
Herodicus, the guild of Asclepius did not practise our pre- 
sent system of medicine, which may be said to educate dis- 
eases. But Herodicus, being a trainer, and himself of a 
sickly constitution, by a combination of training and doctor- 
ing found out a way of torturing first and chiefly himself, 
and secondly the rest of the world. 
How was that? he said. 
By the invention of lingering death ; for he had a mortal 
disease which he perpetually tended, and as recovery was 
out of the question, he passed his entire life as a valetudi- 
narian; he could do nothing but attend upon himself, and 
he was in constant torment whenever he departed in any- 
thing from his usual regimen, and so dying hard, by the 
help of science he struggled on to old age. 
A rare reward of his skill! 
He goes on to say that Asclepius did not instruct 
his descendants in valetudinarian arts because he knew 
that in well-ordered states individuals with occupations 
had no time to be ill. If a carpenter falls sick, he 
asks the doctor for a “ rough and ready cure —an 
emetic, or a purge, or a cautery, or the knife these 
are bis remedies.” Should any one prescribe for him 
a course of dietetics and tell him to swathe and swad- 
dle his head, and all that sort of thing, he says, “he 
sees no good in a life spent in nursing his disease to 
the neglect of his customary employment; and there- 
fore bidding good-bye to this sort of physician, he re- 
sumes his ordinary habits, and either gets well and 
lives and does his business, or, if his constitution fails, 
he dies and has no more trouble.” 
He is more in earnest in another place (“ Gorgias ”) 
in an account of the relations of the arts of medicine 
and gymnastics : “ The soul and the body being two, 
have two arts corresponding to them; there is the art 
of politics attending on the soul; and another art at- 
tending on the body, of which I know no specific name, 
but which may be described as having two divisions, 
one of which is gymnastic, and the other medicine. 
And in politics there is a legislative part, which 
answers to gymnastic, as justice does to medicine ; and 
they run into one another, justice having to do with 
the same subject as legislation, and medicine with the 
same subject as gymnastic, yet there is a difference be- 
tween them. . . . Cookery simulates the disguise oi 11 
medicine, and pretends to know what food is the best 
for the body; and if the physician and the cook had to 
enter into a competition in which children were the 
judges, or men who had no more sense than children, 
as to which of them best understands the goodness or 
badness of food, the physician would be starved to 
death.” 
And later in the same dialogue Socrates claims to 
be the only true politician of his time who speaks, not 
with any view of pleasing, but for the good of the 
State, and is unwilling to practise the graces of rhet- 
oric— and so would make a bad figure in a court of 
justice. He says: “ I shall be tried just as a physi- 
cian would be tried in a court of little boys at the in- 
dictment of the cook. What would he reply in such a 
case, if some one were to accuse him, saying, ‘ O my 
boys, many evil things has this man done to you ; he 
is the death of you, especially of the younger ones 
among you, cutting and burning and starving and suf- 
focating you, until you know not what to do ; he gives 
you the bitterest potions, and compels you to hunger 
and fast ? How unlike the variety of meats and sweets 
which I procured for you.’ What do you suppose that 
the physician would reply when he found himself in 
this predicament ? For if he told the truth he could 
only say : ‘ All this, my boys, I did with a view to 
health,’ and then would there not just be a clamour 
among such judges ? How they would cry out! ” 
The principle of continuity, of uniformity, so strik- 
ing in ancient physics was transferred to the body 
which, like the world, was conceived of as a whole. 
Several striking passages illustrative of this are to be 
found. Thus to the question of Socrates, “Do you 
think that you can know the nature of the soul intelli- 
gently without knowing the nature of the whole?” 
Phaedrus replies, “ Hippocrates, the Asclepiad, says 
that this is the only method of procedure by which the 
nature even of the body can be understood.” The im- 
portance of treating the whole and not the part is in- 
sisted upon. In the case of a patient who comes to 
them with bad eyes the saying is “ that they cannot 
cure his eyes by themselves, but that if his eyes are to 
be cured his head must be treated” : and then again 
they say “ that to think of curing the head alone and 
not the rest of the body also is the height of folly.” 
Charmides had been complaining of a headache, and 
Critias had asked Socrates to make believe that he 
could cure him of it. He said that he had a charm, 
which he had learnt, when serving with the army, of 
one of the physicians of the Thracian king, Zamolxis. 12 
This physician had told' Socrates that the cure of the 
part should not be attempted without treatment of the 
whole, and also that no attempt should be made to cure 
the body without the soul, “and, therefore, if the head 
and body are to be well you must begin by curing the 
soul; that is the first thing. . . . And he who taught 
me the cure and the charm added a special direction, 
‘ Let no one,’ he said, ‘ persuade you to cure his head 
until he has first given you his soul to be cured. For 
this,’ he said, ‘is the great error of our day in the 
treatment of the human body, that physicians separate 
the soul from the body.’ ” The charms to which he 
referred were fair words by which temperance was im- 
planted in the soul. 
Though a contemporary, Hippocrates is only once 
again referred to in the “ Dialogues ” where the 
young Hippocrates, son of Apollodorus, who has come 
to Protagoras, “that almighty wise man,” as Socrates 
terms him in another place, to learn the science and 
knowledge of human life, is asked by Socrates, “ if 
you were going to Hippocrates, the Coau, the Ascle- 
piad, and were about to give him your money, and 
some one said to you, ‘ As being what, do you give 
money to your namesake, Hippocrates, O Hippocrates,’ 
what would you answer ? ” “I should say,” he re- 
plied, “ that I give money to him as a physician.” 
“And what will he make of you?” “A physician,” 
he said—• a paragraph which would indicate that Hip- 
pocrates was in the habit of taking pupils and teach- 
ing them the art of medicine ; and in the “ Euthyde- 
mus,” with reference to the education of physicians, 
Socrates says, “ that he would send such to those who 
profess the art, and to those who demand payment for 
teaching the art, and profess to teach it to any one who 
will come and learn.” 
We get a glimpse of the method of diagnosis, de- 
rived doubtless from personal observation, possibly of 
the great Hippocrates himself, whose critical knowl- 
edge of pulmonary complaints we daily recognize in 
the use of his name in association with the clubbed fin- 
gers of phthisis, and with the succussion splash of pneu- 
mo-thorax. “Suppose some one, who is inquiring into 
the health or some other bodily quality of another : he 
looks at his face and at the tips of his fingers, and 
then he says, ‘ Uncover your chest and back to me 
that I may have a better view.’ ” And then Socrates 
says to Protagoras, “Uncover your mind to me; re- 
veal your opinion, etc.” 
One of the most celebrated medical passages is that 
in which Socrates professes the art of a midwife prac- 13 
tising on the souls of men when they are in labor, and 
diagnosing their condition, whether pregnant with the 
truth or with some “darling folly.” The entire sec-’ 
tiou, though long, must be quoted. Socrates is in one 
of his “little difficulties” and wishes to know of the 
young Themtetus, who has been presented to him as a 
paragon of learning, and whose progress in the path of 
knowledge has been sure and smooth “ flowing on 
silently like a river of oil” what is knowledge? 
Thesetetus is soon entangled and cannot shake off a 
feeling of anxiety. 
Thecet. I can assure you, Socrates, that I have tried 
very often, when I heard the questions which came from 
you; but I can neither persuade myself that I have any 
answer to give, nor hear of any one who answers as you 
would have me answer; and I cannot get rid of the desire 
to answer. 
Soc. These are the pangs of labor, my dear Thetet- 
etus; you have something within you which you are bring- 
ing to the birth. 
Thecet. Ido not know, Socrates ; I only say what I feel. 
Sue. And did you never hear, Simpleton, that lam the 
son of a midwjife, brave and burly, whose name was Phasn- 
arete ? 
Thecet. Yes, T have heard that. 
Soc. And that I myself practise midwifery ? 
Thecet. No, I never heard that. 
Soc. Let me tell you that I do, though, my friend ; but 
you must not reveal the secret, as the world in general have 
not found me out; and therefore they only say of me, that 
I am an exceedingly strange being, who drive men to their 
wits’ end ; did you ever hear that ? 
Thecet. Yes. 
Soc. Shall I tell you the reason ? 
Thecet. By all means. 
Soc. I must make you understand the situation of the 
midwives, and then you will see my meaning better. No 
woman, as you are probably aware, who is still able to 
conceive and bear, attends other women, but only those 
who are past bearing. 
Thecet. Yes, I know. 
Soc. The reason of this is said to be that Artemis 
the goddess of childbirth —is a virgin, and she honors 
those who are like herself ; but she could not allow the 
barren to be midwives, because human nature cannot know 
the mystery of an art without experience; and therefore 
she assigned this office to those who by reason of age are 
past bearing, honoring them from their likeness to herself. 
Thecet. That is natural. 
Soc. And a natural, or rather necessary inference is, 
that the midwives know better than others who is pregnant 
and who is not? 
Thecet. Very true. 
Soc. And by the use of potions and incantations they 14 
are able to arouse the pangs and to soothe them at will; 
they can make those bear who have a difficulty in bearing, 
and if they choose, they can smother the babe in the womb. 
Them. They can. 
Soc. Did you ever remark that they are also most cun- 
ning matchmakers, and have an entire knowledge of what 
unions are likely to produce a brave brood? 
Theoet. I never heard of this. 
Soc. Then let me tell you that this is their greatest 
pride, more than cutting the umbilical cord. And if you 
reflect, you will see that the same art which cultivates and 
gathers in the fruits of the earth, will be most likely to 
know in what soils the several plants or seeds should be 
deposited. 
Them. Yes, the same art. 
Sue. And do you suppose that this is otherwise in the 
case of women. 
Them. No, that is not likely. 
Sue. No, indeed; but the midwives, who are respect- 
able women and have a character to lose, avoid this depart- 
ment of practice, because they are afraid of being called pro- 
curesses, which is a name given to those who join together 
man and woman in an unlawful and unscientific way; and 
yet the true midwife is also the true and only matchmaker. 
Them. That I understand. 
Soc. Such are the midwives, whose work is a very im- 
portant one, but not so important as mine; for women do 
not bring into the world at one time real children, and at 
another time idols which are with difficulty distinguished 
from them; if they did, then the discernment of the true 
and false birth would be the crowning achievement of the 
art of midwifery you should think of that? 
Them. Yes, I certainly should. 
Sue. Well, my art of midwifery is in most respects like 
theirs ; but the difference lies in this —that I attend men 
and not women, and I practise on their souls when they 
are in labor, and not on their bodies ; and the triumph of 
my art is in examining whether -the thought which the 
mind of the young man is bringing to the birth, is a false 
idol or a noble and true creation. And like the midwives, 
I am barren, and the reproach which is often made against 
me, that I ask questions of others and have not the wit to 
answer them myself, is very just; the reason is, that the 
god compels me to be a midwife, but forbids me to' bring 
forth. And therefore I am not myself wise, nor have L 
anything which is the invention or offspring of my own 
soul, but the way is this : Some of those who converse 
with me, at first appear to be absolutely dull, yet afterwards, 
as our acquaintance ripens, if the god is gracious to them, 
they all of them make astonishing progress; and this not 
only in'their own opinion but in that of others. There is 
clear proof that they had never learned anything of me, 
but they have acquired and discovered many noble things 
of themselves, although the god and I help to deli ver them. 
And the proof is, that many of them in their ignorance, 
attributing all to themselves and despising me, either of 
their own accord or at the instigation of others, have gone 15 
away sooner than they ought; and the result has been that 
they have produced abortions by reason of their evil com- 
munications, or have lost the children of which I delivered 
them by'an ill bringing up, deeming lies and shadows of 
more value than truth ; and they have at last ended by see- 
ing themselves, as others see them, to be great fools. Aris- 
tides, the son of Lysimachus, is one of this sort, and there 
are many others. The truants often return to me, and beg 
that I would converse with them again— they are ready to 
go down on their knees and then, if my familiar allows, 
which is not always the case, I receive them and they begin 
to grow again. Dire are the pangs which my art is able 
to arouse and to allay in those who have intercourse with 
me, just like the pangs of women in childbirth ; night and 
day they are full of perplexity and travail which is even 
worse than that of women. So much for them. And there 
are others, Thetetetus, who come to me apparently having 
nothing in them; and as 1 know that they have no need of 
my art, I coax them into another union, and by the grace 
of God I can gradually tell who is likely to do them good. 
Many of them I have given away to Prodicus, and some to 
other inspired sages. I tell you this long story, friend 
Thetetetus, because I suspect, as indeed you seem to think 
yourself, that you are in labor great with some concep- 
tion. Come then to me, who am a midwife and the son of 
a midwife, and try to answer the question which I will ask 
you. And if I abstract and expose your first-born, because 
I discover upon inspection that the conception which you 
have formed is a vain shadow, do not quarrel with me on 
that account, as the manner of women is when their first 
children are taken from them. For I have actually known 
some who were ready to bite me when 1 deprived them of 
a darling folly ; they did not perceive that I acted from 
good will, not knowing that no god is the enemy of man 
(that was not within the range of their ideas) neither was 
1 their enemy in all this, but religion will never allow me 
to admit falsehood, or to stifle the truth. Once more, then, 
Thesetetus, I repeat my old question, “ What is knowl- 
edge?” and do not say that you cannot tell; but quit 
yourself like a man, and by the help of God you will be 
able to tell.9 
Socrates proceeds to determine whether the intel- 
lectual babe brought forth by Theastetus is a wind- 
egg or a real and genuine birth. “ 'Phis then is the 
child, however he may turn out, which you have 
brought into the world, and now that he is born we 
must run around the hearth with him and see whether 
he is worth rearing or only a wind-egg and a sham. 
Is he to be reared in any case? or will you bear to see 
him rejected and not get into a passion if I take away 
your first-born ? ” The conclusion is that you have 
brought forth wind, and that the offsprings of your 
brain are not worth bringing up.” And the dialogue 
9 Thetetetus. ends as it began with a reference to the midwife : “ The 
office of a midwife I, like my mother, have received 
from God ; she delivered women, and I deliver men; 
but they must be young, noble, and fair,” 
111. 
From the writings of Plato we may gather many 
details about the status of physicians in his time. It 
is very evident that the profession was far advanced 
and had been progressively developing for a long 
period before Hippocrates, whom we erroneously, yet 
with a certain propriety, call the Father of Medicine. 
The little by-play between Socrates and Euthydemus 
suggests an advanced condition of medical literature: 
“ Of course, you who have so many books are going 
in for being a doctor,” says Socrates, and then he adds, 
“ there are so many books on medicine, yon know,” 
As Dyer remarks, whatever the quality of these books 
may have been, their number must have been great to 
give point to this chaff. 
It may be clearly gathered from the writings of 
Plato that two sorts of physicians (apart altogether 
from quacks and the -ZEsculapian guild) existed in 
Athens, the private practitioner, and the State-physi- 
cian. The latter, though the smaller numerically, rep- 
resenting apparently the most distinguished class. 
From a reference in one of the dialogues (“Gorgias”) 
they evidently were elected by publicassembly,—“ when 
the assembly meets to elect a physician.” The office 
was apparently yearly, for in the “ Statesman ” is the re- 
mark, “ when the year of office has expired, the admiral 
or physician has to come before a court of review ” to 
answer any charges that may be made against him. 
In the same dialogue occurs the remark. “ and if any- 
one who is in a private station has the art to advise 
one of the public physicians, must he not be called a 
physician ? ” Apparently a physician must have been 
in practice for some time and attained great eminence 
before he was deemed worthy of the post of State-physi- 
cian. “If you and I were physicians, and were advis- 
ing one another that we were competent to practise as 
state-physicians, should I not ask you, and would you 
not ask me, Well, but how about Socrates himself, has 
he good health ? And was any one else ever known to 
be cured by him whether slave or freeman? ”10 
A reference to the two sorts of doctors is also found 
in the “Republic”: “Now you know that when pa- 
10 Gorgias. 17 
tients do not require medicine, but have only to be put 
under a regimen, the inferior sort of practitioner is 
deemed to be good enough; but when medicine has to 
be given, then the doctor should be more of a man.” 
The office of State-physician was in existence fully 
two generations before this time, for Democedes held 
this post at Athens in the second half of the sixth cen- 
tury at a salary of £406, and, very much as a modern 
professor might be, he was seduced away by the offer 
of a great increase in salary by Polycrates, the tyrant 
of Samos. It is evident, too, from the “ Laws;” that 
the doctors had assistants, often among the slaves. 
For of doctors, as I may remind you, some have a 
gentler, others a ruder method of cure; and as children 
ask the doctor to be gentle with them so we will ask the 
legislator to cure our disorders with the gentlest remedies. 
What I mean to say is, that besides doctors there are doc- 
tors’ servants, who are also styled doctors. 
Cle. Very true. 
Ath. And whether they are slaves or freemen makes no 
difference; they acquire their knowledge of medicine by 
obeying and observing their masters; empirically and not 
according to the natural way of learning, as the manner of 
freemen is, who have learned scientifically themselves the 
art which they impart scientifically to their pupils. You 
are aware that there are these two classes of doctors ? 
Ath. And did you ever observe that there are two classes 
of patients in states, slaves and freemen; and the slave 
doctors run about and cure the slaves, or wait for them in 
the dispensaries practitioners of this sort never talk to 
their patients individually, or let them talk about their own 
individual complaints? The slave-doctor prescribes what 
mere experience suggests, as if he had exact knowledge; 
and when he has given his orders, like a tyrant, he rushes 
off with equal assurance to some other servant who is ill; 
and so he relieves the master of the house of the care of 
his invalid slaves. But the other doctor, who is a freeman, 
attends and practises upon freemen ; and lie carries his 
enquiries far back, and goes into the nature of the disorder; 
he enters into discourse with the patient and with his 
friends, and is at once getting information from the sick 
man, and also instructing him as far as he is able, and he 
will not prescribe for him until he has first convinced him ; 
at last, when he has brought the patient more and more 
under his persuasive influences and set him on the road to 
health, he attempts to effect a cure. Now which is the 
better way of proceeding in a physician and in a trainer ? 
Js he the better who accomplishes his ends in a double way, 
or he who works in one way, and that the ruder and inferior ? 
Cle. To be sure. 
This idea of first convincing a patient by argument 
is also mentioned in the “ Gorgias,” and would appear 
indeed to have furnished occupation for some of the 18 
numerous sophists of that period. Gorgias lauding 
the virtues of rhetoric and claiming that she holds 
under her sway all the inferior art, says: “ Let me 
offer you a striking example of this. On several 
occasions I have been with my brother Herodicus, or 
some other physician, to see one of his patients, who 
would not allow the physician to give him medicine or 
apply the knife or hot iron to him; and I have per- 
suaded him to do for me what he would not do for the 
physician just by the use of rhetoric. And I say that 
if a rhetorician and a physician were to go to any city 
and had there to argue in the Ecclesia or any other 
assembly as to which of them should be elected state- 
physician, the physician would have no chance; but 
he who could speak would be chosen if he wish.” In 
another place (“Laws”) Plato satirizes this custom : 
“ For of this you may be very sure, that if one of 
those empirical physicians, who practise medicine with- 
out science, were to come upon the gentleman physician 
talking to his gentle patient, and using the language 
almost of philosophy beginning at the beginning of 
the disease, and discoursing about the whole nature of 
the body, he would burst into a hearty laugh —he 
would say what most of those who are called doctors 
always have at their tongue’s end : foolish fellow, he 
would say, you are not healing the sick man, but you 
are educating him ; and he does not want to be made 
a doctor, but to get well.” 
Of the personal qualifications of the physician not 
much is said ; but in the “ Republic” (111, 408) there 
is an original, and to us not very agreeable, idea: 
“ Now the most skilful physicians are those who, from 
their youth upwards, have combined with a knowledge 
of their art, the greatest experience of disease; they 
had better not be in robust health, and should have had 
all manner of diseases in their own person. For the 
body, as I conceive, is not the instrument with which 
they cure the body; in that case we could not allow 
them to be or to have been sickly ; but they cure the 
body with the mind, and the mind which has become 
and is sick can cure nothing.” 
Some idea of the estimate which Plato put on the 
physician may be gathered from the mystical account 
in the “ Phsedrus ” of the nature of the soul and of life 
in the upper world. We are but animated failures 
the residua of the souls above which have attained a 
vision of truth, but have fallen “hence beneath the 
double load of forgetfulness and vice.” There are 
nine grades of human existence into which these souls 
may pass, from that of a philosopher or artist to that 19 
of a tyrant. The physician or lover of gymnastic toils 
comes in the fourth class. 
But if Plato assigns the physician a place in the 
middle tier in his mystery, he welcomes him socially 
into the most select and aristocratic circle of Athens. 
In that most festive of all festal occasions, at the house 
of Agathon, described in the “ Symposium,” Eryxira- 
achus, a physician and the son of one, is a chief speaker, 
and in his praise of love says, “ from medicine I 
will begin that I may do honor to my art.” We find 
him, too, on the side of temperance and sobriety ; “The 
weak heads like myself, Aristodemus, Phaedrus, and 
others who never can drink, are fortunate in finding 
that the stronger ones are not in a drinking mood. (I 
do not include Socrates, who is able either to drink or 
to abstain, and will not mind, whichever we do.) Well, 
as none of the company seem disposed to drink much, 
I may be forgiven for saying, as a physician, that 
drinking deep is a bad practice, which I never follow, 
if I can help, and certainly do not recommend to an- 
other, least of all to any one who still feels the effect 
of yesterday’s carouse.” The prescriptions for hic- 
cough given by Eryximachus give verisimilitude to the 
dialogue. When the turn of Aristophanes came he had 
eaten too much and had the hiccough, and he said to 
Eryximachus, “You ought either to stop my hiccough 
or speak in my turn.” Eryximachus recommended 
him to hold his breath, or if that failed to#gargle with 
a little water, and if the hiccough still continued, to 
tickle his nose with something and sneeze, adding, “ if 
you sneeze once or twice even the most violent hiccough 
is sure to go.” 
Upon the medical symptoms narrated in that memo- 
rable scene, unparalleled in literature, after Socrates 
had drank the poison in prison, it is unnecessary to 
dwell; but I may refer to one aspect as indicating 
the reverence felt for the representative of the great 
Healer. Denied his wish (by the warning of the jailor, 
who says that there is only sufficient poison) to offer 
a libation to a god, Socrates’s dying words were, 
“ Crito, we owe a cock to JEsculapius.” _“ The mean- 
ing of this solemnly smiling farewell of Socrates would 
seem to be,” according to Dyer, “that to iEsculapius, 
a god who always is prescribing potions and whose 
power is manifest in their effects, was due that most 
welcome and sovereign remedy which cured all the 
pains and ended all the woes'of Socrates the hem- 
lock, which cured him of life which is death, and gave 
him the glorious realities of hereafter. For this great 
boon of awakening into real life Socrates owed .ZEscu- 20 
lapius a thank offering. This offering of a cock to 
-ZEsculapius was plainly intended for him as the awak- 
ener of the dead to life everlasting.” 
And permit me to conclude this already too long 
account with the eulogium of Professor Jowett 
words worthy of the master, worthy of his great inter- 
preter to this generation: 
“ More than two thousand two hundred years have 
passed away since he returned to the place of Apollo 
and the Muses. Yet the echo of his words continues 
to be heard among men, because of all philosophers he 
has the most melodious voice. He is the inspired 
prophet or teacher who can never die, the only oue in 
whom the outward form adequately represents the fair 
soul within ; in whom the thoughts of all who went 
before him are reflected and of all who come after him 
are partly anticipated. Other teachers of philosophy 
are dried up and withered, after a few centuries they 
have become dust; but he is fresh and blooming, and is 
always begettiugnew ideas in the minds of men. They 
are one-sided and abstract; but he has many sides of 
wisdom. Nor is he always consistent with himself, 
because he is always moving onward, and knows that 
there are many more things in philosophy than can be 
expressed in words, and that truth is greater than con- 
sistency. He who approaches him in the most reverent 
spirit shall reap most of the fruits of his wisdom ; he 
who reads him by the light of ancient commentators 
will have the least understanding of him. 
“We may see him with the eye of the miud in the 
groves of the Academy, or on the banks of the Ilissus, 
or in the streets of Athens, alone or walking with 
Socrates, full of these thoughts which have since be- 
come the common possession of mankind. Or we may 
compare him to a statue hid away in some temple of 
Zeus or Apollo, no longer existing on earth, a statue 
which has a look as of the God himself. Or we may 
once more imagine him following in another state of 
being the great company of heaven which he beheld 
of old in a vision (‘ Phaedrus,’ 248). So, ‘ partly tri- 
fling but with a degree of seriousness’ (* Symposium ’ 
197, E), we linger around the memory of a world 
which has passed away Phaedrus,’ 250, C).”