Page 49 - My FlipBook

THE CREEKS 40

The philosophical ideas ot the rime had coiisicK i aidt- influence on rhe
medical theories of Hippocrates and his successors. The unixerse was
considered as constituted hv tour elements: earth, air, tire, water.
To each of these elements a special quality was attributed, and, thus,
one recognized four fundamental qualities, viz., cold, dryness, heat, and
moisture. Man—the most pertect being—was regarded as a "micro-
cosmos," or small world in himself, that is, a sort of compendium of the
whole universe, and his organism, in correlation to the tour primordial
elements of the universe, was believed to be constituted of tour funda-
mental humors—the blood, the pituita or mucus, the \ellow bile, and
the black bile or atrabile.
Health, savs Hippocrates,' depends on the just relation one to another
of these principles, as to composition, force, and quantit\', and on their
perfect mixture; instead, when one of the tour principles is wanting or
in excess, or separates itself from the other components of the organism,
one has a diseased condition. In fact, he adds, if some one humor flow
from the bodv in a measure superior to its superabundance, such a loss
will occasion illness. If, then, the humor separated from the others col-
lect in the interior of the bod\-, not only the part that remains deprived
of its presence will suffer, but also that into wdiich the flow^ takes place
and where the engorgement is produced.
We have here briefly stated these generalities in order to make
ourselves clearly understood in speaking hereafter on difi^"erent subjects,
whether wath regard to Hippocrates or to other authors of the time.
In the w^orks of Hippocrates there is not one chapter that treats sepa-
rately of the affections of the teeth, just as there is no book in which
he speaks separately of diseases of the vascular or nervous s}'stems, and
so on. There are, nevertheless, a great number of passages scattered
throughout the Hippocratic collection from which we can deduce very \
clearly the great importance that the Father of Medicine ascribed to the
teeth and to their maladies.
In the book De carnibus, the formation of the teeth is spoken of among

other things. It might have been supposed that Hippocrates would have
been ignorant of the fact that the formation of the teeth commences in the
intra-uterine life. This, however, is not the case; in fact, he says: "The
first teeth are formed by the nourishment of the fetus in the womb, and
after birth by the mother's milk. Those that come forth after these are
shed are formed by food and drink. The shedding of the first teeth
generally takes place at about seven years of age, those that come forth
after this grow old with the man, unless some illness destroys thei iva.

^ Hippocratis opera, Geneva, 1657 to 1662, De natura hominis, p. 225.
- Page 251.
4