[The Evolution of Modern Medicine by William Osler]@TWC D-Link bookThe Evolution of Modern Medicine CHAPTER II -- GREEK MEDICINE 53/72
The extent to which these two differ and investigate diverse provinces must not escape us, since facts show that their inquiries are, at least to a certain extent, conterminous.
For physicians of culture and refinement make some mention of natural science, and claim to derive their principles from it, while the most accomplished investigators into nature generally push their studies so far as to conclude with an account of medical principles." (Works, III,480 b.) Theophrastus, a student of Aristotle and his successor, created the science of botany and made possible the pharmacologists of a few centuries later.
Some of you doubtless know him in another guise--as the author of the golden booklet on "Characters," in which "the most eminent botanist of antiquity observes the doings of men with the keen and unerring vision of a natural historian" (Gomperz).
In the Hippocratic writings, there are mentioned 236 plants; in the botany of Theophrastus, 455.
To one trait of master and pupil I must refer--the human feeling, not alone of man for man, but a sympathy that even claims kinship with the animal world.
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