Hippocrates, Aphorisms, c. Fifth
Century BCE
Sec. I. 1. Life is short, art is long, occasion sudden, experiment dangerous,
judgment difficult. Neither is it sufficient that the physician do his office, unless the
patient and his attendants do their duty and external conditions are well ordered.
6. In extreme diseases extreme and searching remedies are best.
13. Old men easily endure fasting, middle-aged men not so well, young men still
less easily, and children worst of all, especially those who are of a more lively spirit.
14. Those bodies that grow have much natural heat, therefore they require good
store of food or else the body consumes, but old men have little heat in them, therefore
they require but little food, for muchnourishment extinguishes that heat. And this is the
reason that old men do not have very acute fevers, because their bodies are cold.
20. Those things that are or have been justly determined by nature ought not to
be moved or altered, either by purging or other irritating medicine, but should be let
alone.
Sec. II. 3. Sleeping or walking, if either be immoderate, is evil.
4. Neither satiety nor hunger nor any other thing which exceeds the natural
bounds can be good or healthful.
24. The fourth day is the index of the seventh, the eighth of the beginning of
the week following. But the eleventh day is to be considered, for it is the fourth day of
another seventh. And again the seventeenth day is to be considered, being the fourth from
the fourteenth and the seventh from the eleventh.
51. It is dangerous much and suddenly either to empty, heat, fill, or cool, or
by any other means to stir the body, for whatever is beyond moderation is an enemy to
nature; but that is safe which is done little by little, and especially when a change is
to be made from one thing to another.
Sec. III. 1. Changes of seasons are most effectual causes of diseases, and so
are alterations of cold and heat within the seasons, and other things proportionately in
the same manner.
Sec IV. 37. Cold sweats in acute fevers signify death, but in more mild diseases
they mean the continuance of the fever.
38. In what part of the body the sweat is there is the disease.
39. And in what part of the body there is unusual heat or cold there the disease
is seated.
Sec. VII. 65. The same meat administered to a person sick of a fever as to one
in health will strengthen the healthy one, but will increase the malady of the sick one.
Sec. VIII. 6. Where medicines will not cure incision must be made; if incisions
fail, we must resort to cauterizing; but if that will not do we may judge the malady
incurable.
18. The finishing stroke of death is when the vital heat ascends above the
diaphragm and all the moisture is dried up. But when the lungs and heart have lost their
moisture, the heat being all collected together in the most mortal places, the vital fire
by which the whole structure was built up and held together is suddenly exhaled. Then the
soul leaving this earthly building makes its exit partly through the flesh and partly
through the openings in the head, by which we live; and thus it surrenders up this cold
earthly statue, together with the heat, blood, tissues, and flesh.
Archimedes, Letter to Dositheus, c. 220 B.C.:
Archimedes to Dositheus, greeting: Formerly I sent to you the studies which I had
finished up to that time together with the demonstrations, which were to show that a
segment bounded by a straight line and a conic section is four-thirds of the triangle on
the same base as the segment and of the same height. Since that time certain propositions
as yet undemonstrated have come to my mind, and I have undertaken to work them out. These
are: 1. The surface of any sphere is four times the surface of its greatest circle; 2. The
surface of any segment of a sphere is equal to the surface of that circle the radius of
which equals the straight line drawn from the vertex of the segment to the circumference
of the circle which serves as the base of the segment; 3. That a cylinder with a base
equal to the great circle of a given sphere, and a height equal to the diameter of
thesphere contains half the volume of that sphere and its surface is equal to half the
surface of that sphere.
These propositions, of course, were always true of these figures, but they were hidden
to the men who studied geometry before my time. Therefore, since I have discovered that
these things hold true of these figures I do not fear to place them alongside my own
previous results and the most thoroughly established theorems of Eudoxus, such as: any
pyramid is equal to one-third of the prism of the same base and height, and any cone is
equal to one-third of the cylinder of the same base and height.
First Postulate. Supposed that a fluid is of such a character that when its
component parts are undisturbed and in immediate contact the part which is subject to the
less pressure is moved by the part which is subject to the greater pressure; and that each
part is forced in a perpendicular direction by the part above, if the fluid is compressed.
Proposition 1. If a surface is always cut by a plane passing through a given
point, and if the section thus formed is always a circle whose center is the given point,
the surface is that of.a sphere.
Proposition 2. The surface of any still fluid is always the surface of a sphere
whose center is the center of the earth.
Proposition 3. Those solids which are of the same weight as a fluid in
proportion to their size, when sunk in that fluid will be submerged in such a way that
they neither extend above that fluid nor sink below it.
Proposition 4. A solid which is lighter than a given fluid will not sink below
the surface when placed in that fluid, but part of it will extend above the surface.
Proposition 5. A solid lighter than a given fluid will, when placed in that
fluid, be so far submerged that the weight of the solid will bc equal to the weight of the
fluid displaced.
Proposition 6. If a solid lighter than a given fluid be forced into lhat fluid
the solid will be driven upwards again by a force which is equal to the difference between
the weight of the fluid and the weight of the amount of fluid displaced.
Second Postulate: If a solid lighter than a given fluid rest in that fluid the
weight of the solid to the weight of an equal volume of the fluid will be as the part of
the solid which is submerged is to the whole solid.
Galen, Medicine, c. Mid-Second Century CE
There are in all three branches of the study of medicine, in this order. The first is
the study of the result by analysis; the second is the combining of the facts found by
analysis; the third is the determining of the definition, which branch we are now to
consider in this work. This branch of the science may be called not only the determining
of the definition, but just as well the explication, as some would term it, or the
resolution, as some desire, or the explanation, or according to still others, the
exposition. Now some of the Herophilii, such as Heraclides of Erythrea, have attempted to
teach this doctrine. These Herophilii and certain followers of Erasistratus and of
Athenaeus, the Attalian, studied also the doctrine of combination. But no one before us
has described the method which begins with the study of the results, from which every art
must take its beginning methodically; this we have considered in a former work.
Chap. I. Medicine is the science of the healthy, the unhealthy, and the
indeterminate, or neutral. It is a matter of indifference whether one calls the second the
ill, or the unhealthy. It is better to give the name of the science in common than in
technical terms. But the healthy, the unhealthy, the neutral, are each of them subject to
a three-fold-division: first, as to the body; second, as to the cause; and third, as to
the sign. The body which contains the health, the cause which affects or preserves the
health, and the sign or symptom which marks the condition of the health, all these are
called by the Greeks hygienia. In the same way they speak of the bodies susceptible to
disease, of causes effecting and aiding diseases, and of signs indicating diseases, as
pathological. Likewise they speak of neutral bodies, causes, and signs. And according to
the first division the science of medicine is called the science of the causes of health,
according to the second, of the causes of ill-health, and according to the third of the
causes of neutral conditions.
Chap. 2. The healthy body is simply that which is rightly composed from its very
birth in the simple and elementary parts of its structure, and is symmetrical in the
organs composed of these elements. From another point of view, that is also a healthy body
which is in sound condition at the time of speaking.
