HIPPOCRATES.

HIPPOCRATES. There is so much discrepancy between one and another of the works ascribed to Hippocrates when anatomical matters are touched on, that assuredly they are not all products of the same mind. In the book on the heart—wepì κapdíns—for instance, it is spoken of as a thick and strong muscle, having auricles and ventricles (these last being divided by a dense sulcated partition), giving rise to the great vessels of the lungs and body, which have valves at their roots, for the purpose, it is said, of closing their orifices against any intrusion of the inbreathed air. In the book on Nourishment—πеpì трopĥs—however (in which τροφῆς—however both arteries and veins are spoken of, as by Erasistratus, under the name of pλéßes, the term arteryȧprepía-being applied to the windpipe and its bronchial divisions), the blood-vessels are described as arising from the head and other regions of the body rather than from the heart.

Of the vessels arising in the manner stated above, there are four principal pairs, as well as several others of less magnitude which take their origin from the

stomach and intestines, and collect and distribute nourishment to the parts of the body, internal as well as external, to which they tend. The vessels in general manifest motion and carry spirit, many branches proceeding from single trunks; but where these arise or where they end is not well known, " for in a circle you find no beginning κύκλου γὰρ γεγενομένου ȧpxn oux evpéon"-words which, detached from their context, have been held to show that the world had not to wait for Harvey to proclaim the general circulation of the blood, the great physiological fact having been familiarly known to the Father of Physic!

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Nor is the above the only passage in the Hippocratic writings that has been laid hold of and interpreted in a similar sense. In the book De Insomniis, the words " ποταμοὶ δέ μὴ κατά τρόπον γινόμενοι ἄιματος Teρíodov Téμaivovou, &c.-but, like rivers, not comporting themselves according to wont, when the course of the blood is interrupted," &c., give one of the prejudiced people who would ascribe the discovery of the circulation to any one rather than its author, an opportunity to translate the Greek ἄιματος περίοδον by the Latin sanguinis circuitus, and to say: "There cannot be the shadow of a doubt that the circulation of the blood was known to Hippocrates-ut omnino omnem fenestram præcludat dubitationi furitne Hippocrati notus circuitus sanguinis." (!) How several distinct

1 Io. Ant. van der Linden. Hippocrates. De Circulatione Sanguinis Exercitationes, xxvii. Lugd. Batav., 1659-63. 4to.

currents in circles should imply one general current in a circle, however, is not very obvious, to say the least.

Hippocrates believed the heart to be the fountain of the blood and source of the native heat, being surrounded by the lungs in order that its ardour might be tempered by the cooler air they contain. The left ventricle, nevertheless, and somewhat in contradiction with this, is said to be thicker than the right in order to economize or hold the heat!

The ventricles of the heart, inasmuch as they are the source whence proceed the streams that irrigate the body and give life, Hippocrates concluded must impress upon man the whole of his distinguishing powers; on which account it is that a wound of the heart is followed by instant death. The auricles, again, were appendages to the ventricles-but have nothing to do with hearing, their office being to draw air into their interior for transmission to the ventricles, in virtue of a power they possess analogous to that of the bellows used by workers in metal. But motion is an appanage of the whole heart; the auricles and ventricles alternately dilating and contracting.

Within the ventricles are seen certain membranes, spread abroad like spider's webs, attached to the sides of the cavities by filaments, spoken of under the name of veûpa, which guard the several orifices that lead into and out of the sinuses. The Greek word

veûpov signifying both nerve and sinew, Aristotle, νεύρον

as has been said, is generally thought to have believed that the heart gave origin to the proper nerves as well as to the blood-vessels-a conclusion which is not adopted by Hippocrates, who derives the proper nerves from the brain and spinal cord. The membranes or valves in question, he thinks, are more perfect on the left than on the right side of the heart; the left ventricle being the more immediate seat of the soul, and the true centre whence the body is ruled -mens enim hominis in ventriculo sinistro sita est.

As by much the most noble organ of the body, the heart is not nourished by blood supplied directly from the intestines, but by blood of a purer kind transmitted by a special vein proceeding from the sinus of the vena cava-the vena coronaria. Neither is it to be presumed that the aorta is nourished by the blood it contains; seeing that both it and the left ventricle are found completely empty in a slaughtered animal— in totum solitudo appareant or if perchance anything be found in them, it is only a little serum. The right ventricle and its artery, on the contrary, are always seen to be more or less full of blood, this having been in course of transmission to the lungs for their nourishment, an office for which it is fitted after undergoing improvement in its quality by the motions of the heart, and obtaining a certain addition of air by the action of the auricles. The air added, however, can be but little; for it were absurd to suppose that the cold should be in excess of the heat, the blood

not being hot of itself or by its own nature-like water heated on the coals, it receives the heat it has from the substance of the heart. Many, nevertheless, he adds, are of opinion that the blood is truly hot of itself.

In conformity with these views, the arteries are spoken of as venula calidiores—the vessels charged with heat, as by Erasistratus they had been characterized as vasa spiritus,-the vessels charged with ætherialized air or spirit. The veins, again, are always regarded as the proper blood-vessels; the channels by which the fluid that nourishes the body is conveyed to all its parts. (Conf. Op. Hippocratis â Kuehn, passim.)