The power of nature in disease / by J. Wallace Anderson, M.D., formerly physician to the Royal Infirmary, Glasgow, and lecturer on medicine, Queen Margaret College.

  • Anderson, J. Wallace (James Wallace)
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The power of nature in disease / by J. Wallace Anderson, M.D., formerly physician to the Royal Infirmary, Glasgow, and lecturer on medicine, Queen Margaret College. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    crates himself says whether he uses the word natures in a special or in a more general sense in his famous aphorism. And then there is the question as to it being a deliberating intelligent force. We know that at a period somewhat anterior to Hippocrates philosophers were considering the soul less as an abstraction and more in relation to the body which it inhabited, Parmenides indeed holding that in man body and soul are one and the same. Aristotle considered the soul to be the entelechia, the actuality of the body, that which gave the body being. He further divided the soul in the generic sense into the vegetative, the sentient and the rational soul. To the vegetative soul was due the nutrition common to plants and animals; the sentient soul was concerned with sense perception ; and the rational soul was the source of reason peculiar to man.^ Here, then, we have both the specialisation of the generic soul and reference to its relation to simple growth, the growth equally of plants and animals. Now though by the vegetative soul there was simply under- stood nature in its lower sense, i.e., vital power or growth, still in its higher sense our natures derived an intelligence from the entelechia or generic soul. And speaking of Nature in the widest sense Aristotle says that Nature and God are always working towards an end and striving after what is perfect.^ Was it then this intelligent nature to which Hippocrates referred It can hardly be, from the sentence which immediately follows the aphorism and which appears to have been virtually overlooked. Nature is the healer of our diseases. She finds out ways for herself, not by intelligence {ovk e/c ^lavoirii), but just as in winking, using the tongue and the like. Could a thesis so essentially difficult to express in words be more clearly illustrated? It would not have helped us one whit if Hippocrates had said that Nature here acted automatically. That would only have been to transpose the difficulty to another word. But the illustration tells us that we are to understand that this Nature is not some- thing intelligent or thinking, but a force which though not itself deliberate has all the effect or purpose of a deliberate act. No one can explain it; but Hippocrates gives us familiar actions that he believes are analogous. It seems strange, therefore, that ^ Galen, De Elemenlis ex Hippocraii, Lib. i., cap. 5, asserts that Aristotle's system is but a copy of that of Hippocrates. (Kat fiev Brj Kai to fidos twv Xoytav wcaurajs eoiKev 'ApiaroTeKrii irewoirjo'dai tw 'IwiroKpaTei.) Kiihn's edition, i. 44S. 2 De Gael, i. 4.