.

.

so too in the body the good and healthy elements are to be indulged, and the bad elements and the elements of disease are not to be indulged, but discouraged.

And this is what the physician has to do, and in this the art of medicine consists: for medicine may be regarded generally as the knowledge of the loves and desires of the body and how to satisfy them or not; and the best physician is he who is able to separate fair love from foul, or to convert one into the other; and he who knows how to eradicate and how to implant love, whichever is required, and can reconcile the most hostile elements in the constitution and make them loving friends, is a skilful practitioner." (22a) Professor Gildersleeve's view of Eryximachus is less favorable (Johns Hopkins University Circular, Baltimore, January, 1887).

Plato, III, 186--Jowett, I, 556.
The second great note in Greek medicine illustrates the directness with which they went to the very heart of the matter.