ABSTRACT
It was the great achievement of the Greek school that it threw off the fetters of supernaturalism in relation to disease. Even before the birth of Hippocrates the art of preventive medicine, so far as it is concerned with physical development, had progressed, as shown by the Grecian gymnasium with its wrestling, games, and baths. The belief in witchcraft is a variant from the belief in the extra-mundane source of disease, the special powers of women with the evil eye being substituted for the caprices of a heathenishly conceived divinity. The mediaeval physician studied the horoscope of his patient; and he used the motions and conjunctions of the seven planets as helps in diagnosis and prognosis, as people now use blood counts or blood-pressure gauges or the Rontgen rays. Let aire be cleere and light, and free from faults, That come of secret passages and vaults.
