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XIII.: FINITIONES MEDICÆ. - Hippocrates, The Writings of Hippocrates and Galen [1846]

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The Writings of Hippocrates and Galen. Epitomised from the Original Latin translations, by John Redman Coxe (Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston, 1846).

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XIII.

FINITIONES MEDICÆ.

medical definitions.

This is useful by directing attention to the importance of definitions. It adverts to physicians, anterior to the time of Hippocrates, as having written but little, and defined nothing. Hippocrates was the first to collect these scattered fragments, and add to them his own. Many after him pursued the same plan, though without any kind of order, but merely spread at random through their works, such as Herophilus, Apollonius, and others. We are now presented with a definition, of what a definition is;—then follow, definitions of a science, art, sect, medicine,—and its respective sects, &c. Man is defined, his elements, organs, humours, nature, age, respiration, sanguification, pulse, motion, senses, health, and sickness. To this, succeed that of fever and its varieties, and that of various other diseases, as of the head and other parts. He speaks of medicine as being divided into two parts, contemplative and active, that is into theory and practice. The affections of the uterus, its discharges; the hair and its diseases, of which nine varieties are enumerated, one, under the title of rhopalosis, (i. e. “velut in baculos coagmentatio,”) appears to me to be the plica, or nearly allied to it. Fractures of the skull follow; diseases of the eyes and other organs of sense; the semen and its formation,—in which is agitated the question of the female seed;—that of the fœtus, and its nourishment;—and also of monsters; of seven and eight month children, and of uterine polypi, whose excision is recommended when large. Hemorrhage;—surgery and its parts, are noticed. This book, is in fact, in many respects a very useful one; it enables us, in case of difficulty, to look into the original meaning of words; and if not practically important, it is interesting throughout, if only on this score; a good translation of it might be useful, under this consideration.