Introduction

We can never be fully in possession of a science until we know the history of its development. This applies to medicine no less than to the philosophy of the sciences in general. It was not so very many years ago when the fevers existing along the coast of Greece were not understood, and naval surgeons who met with them supposed that they were dealing with either a new form of typhoid fever or some new pernicious febrile affection. Then Littré confronted the modern descriptions with those found in the Hippocratic Collection, thus giving them their true names and real signification. Researches conducted in recent years have shown the accuracy of the Hippocratic accounts, and we may say that to-day the diseases observed in these regions are those described by Hippocrates more than twenty-three centuries ago.