Volume 1 — PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. (continued 4)

In detailing these opinions of the ancient philosophers, it is not my present business to determine whether they be true or not; my task is fulfilled, if I have given a distinct and faithful exposition of them, so that their real import and meaning may be readily comprehended by the medical reader. I may be allowed to remark, however, that, strange although that Protean being, the primary matter, may appear to be to such men of science as are not disposed to recognize the existence of any substance which cannot be subjected to their senses, and who refuse to admit the legitimacy of every process of analysis, but what is conducted in the laboratory of the chemist, opinions similar to those of the ancient philosophers have been held by some of the most profound thinkers and distinguished experimentalists of modern times. Thus Lord Bacon, the reputed father of the inductive philosophy, appears to admit all the tenets of the ancients regarding the first matter, which, like them, he considers to have been embodied in the Homeric fable of Proteus.[347] He says, in reference to it, “that under the person of Proteus is signified Matter, the most ancient of all things, next to the Deity; that the herd of Proteus was nothing else than the ordinary species of animals, plants, and metals, into which matter appears to diffuse, and, as it were, to consume itself; so that, after it has formed and finished those several species, (its task being, in a manner, complete,) it appears to sleep and be at rest, nor to labor at, attempt, or prepare any species farther.”[348] That learned and accomplished scholar, Mr. Harris, in his work on “Philosophical Arrangements,” writes thus on the subject we are now treating of: “Here, then, we have an idea (such as it is) of that singular being, the Primary Matter, a Being which those philosophers who are immerged in sensible subjects know not well how to admit, though they cannot well do without it; a Being which flies the perception of every sense, and which is at best, even to the intellect, but a negative object, no otherwise comprehensible than either by analogy or abstraction.

“We gain a glimpse of it by abstraction, when we say that the first matter is not the lineaments and complexion which make the beautiful face; nor yet the flesh and blood which make these lineaments and that complexion; nor yet the liquid and solid aliments, which make that flesh and blood; nor yet the simple bodies of earth and water, which make those various aliments; but something which, being below all these, and supporting them all, is yet different from them all, and essential to their existence.

“We obtain a sight of it by analogy when we say that, as is the brass to the statue, the marble to the pillar, the timber to the ship, or any one secondary matter to any secondary form; so is the First and Original Matter to all forms in general.”[349]

Nay, the illustrious Sir Isaac Newton would seem, in the following extract, to countenance the profound speculations of the ancient philosophers with respect to the elements, and the transmutations of these substances into one another. He says, “Are not gross bodies and light (or ether) convertible into one another?—and may not bodies receive much of their activity from the particles of light which enter into their composition? The changing of bodies into light and of light into bodies is very agreeable to the course of Nature, which seems delighted with permutations. Water, which is a very fluid tasteless salt, she changes by heat into vapor, a sort of air; and by cold into ice, which is a hard, pellucid, brittle, fusible stone, and this stone returns into water by heat, and vapor returns into water by cold. Earth, by heat, becomes fire, and by cold returns into earth.”[350]

I may further mention that all the late researches of chemical philosophers have tended to confirm the tenets of the ancients regarding the Elements. Thus in that very singular performance “The Elements of Physiophilosophy,” by Dr. Lorenz Oken, the productions of the mineral kingdom are classified, very much in accordance with the ancient arrangement, into four classes, namely, into Earth-earths, Water-earths, Air-earths, and Fire-earths.[351] It is also well known that chemical experiment has lately established that several animal and vegetable substances, such as albumen, fibrin, and casein, which were formerly looked upon as distinct substances, are all but modifications of one substance, which is now regarded as the original of all the tissues; and further, that protein, in every respect identical with that which forms the basis of the three aforesaid animal principles, may be obtained from similar elements in the vegetable kingdom.[352] And if every step which we advance in the knowledge of the intimate structure of things leads us to contract the number of substances formerly held to be simple, I would not wonder if it should yet turn out that oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen are, like what the ancients held the elements to be—all nothing else but different modifications of one ever-changing matter. But I will not indulge further in such speculations, especially as I have reason to apprehend that I may be thought to be wandering from my own proper sphere in thus prosecuting researches which may be supposed to have but a distant bearing on the subject now in hand. I must, however, be allowed again to repeat my declaration that it is impossible to comprehend the theories contained in the Hippocratic treatises without a proper acquaintance with the Physical Philosophy of the ancients, and that these principles have been misapprehended and misrepresented most unaccountably by modern writers, so as to occasion corresponding mistakes with regard to ancient medicine. I trust, then, that my present labors will not be ineffectual in preventing such mistakes in future; though, at the same time, knowing, as I well do, the practical bent of British science at the present day, I cannot but be apprehensive that a certain portion of my readers will lend a deaf ear to speculative opinions, of which they cannot recognize the importance, and will be disposed to discard the doctrines of the ancient philosophers, before they have rightly comprehended their import:

I am sensible, too, that I may have just reason to suspect that I still retain a too partial fondness for the fascinating studies in which I indulged at one period, beyond what, perhaps, was prudent in a physician, and that it would have been better for me if I had taken a lesson from the mythical hero of the “Odyssey,” and had resisted the enchanting voice of the ancient Siren when she sought to allure me from the active duties of a professional life, with the confident assurance that I should leave her “much delighted, and with an increase of knowledge.”[354]

Before concluding, I will briefly recapitulate the results to which our present inquiry has conducted us:—

1st. That many of the medical theories which occur in the Hippocratic treatises are founded on the physical philosophy of the ancients, and more particularly on their doctrines, with regard to the elements of things.

2d. That all the great sects of the ancient philosophers held that the four elements, namely, fire, air, earth, and water, are transmutable into one another, being all of a homogeneous nature, and based on one common substratum, namely, the primary matter.

3d. That, by reasoning from observation and analogy, the ancient philosophers arrived at the conclusion that this primary matter is a substance devoid of all qualities and forms, but susceptible of all forms and qualities.

4th. That although certain of the philosophers, the contemporaries and predecessors of Hippocrates, appear to hold that some one of the elements, such as fire and water, was the original of all things, even these had an idea, although not expressed by them in a definite manner, of a first matter, which serves as a basis to all the elements.

5th. That these doctrines of the ancient philosophers, whether well founded or not, are countenanced by many eminent names in modern literature and philosophy.

6th. That the opinion generally entertained regarding the doctrines of the ancient philosophers on this subject is altogether erroneous.

THE WORKS OF HIPPOCRATES.