e people attributed it to a god, but that "to me it
appears that such affections are just as much divine as all others are,
and that no one disease is either more divine or more human than
another, but that all are alike divine, for that each has its own
nature, and that no one arises without a natural cause."

From this it will be seen that Hippocrates regarded all phenomena as at
once divine and scientifically determinable. In this respect it is
interesting to compare him with one of his most illustrious
contemporaries, namely, with Socrates, who distributed phenomena into
two classes: one wherein the connection of antecedent and consequent was
invariable and ascertainable by human study, and wherein therefore
future results were accessible to a well-instructed foresight; the
other, which the gods had reserved for themselves and their
unconditional agency, wherein there was no invariable or ascertainable
sequence, and where the result could only be foreknown by some omen or
prophecy, or other special inspired communication from themselves. Each
of these classes was essentially distinct, and required to be looked at
and dealt with in a manner radically incompatible with the other.
Physics and astronomy, in the opinion of Socrates, belonged to the
divine class of phenomena in which human research was insane, fruitless,
and impious.[2]

Hippocrates divided the causes of diseases into two classes: the one
comprehending the influence of seasons, climates, water, situation, and
the like; the other consisting of such causes as the amount and kind of
food and exercise in which each individual indulges. He considered that
while heat and cold, moisture and dryness, succeeded one another
throughout the year, the human body underwent certain analogous changes
which influenced the diseases of the period. With regard to the second
class of causes producing diseases, he attributed many disorders to a
vicious system of diet, for excessive and defective diet he considered
to be equally injurious.

In his medical doctrines Hippocrates starts with the axiom that the body
is composed of the four elements--air, earth, fire, and water. From
these the four fluids or humours (namely, blood, phlegm, yellow bile,
and black bile) are formed. Health is the result of a right condition
and proper proportion of these humours, disease being due to changes in
their quality or distribution. Thus inflammation is regarded as the
passing of blood into