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THE TIME OF HIPPOKRATES. 71
over to public scorn. In the Hippokratic " Law " they are
likened to the supernumeraries in a theatre " who appear to
be actors, are clothed and wear masks like them and yet
are only so in name, not in reality." * In another place it
is said that it is with unskilful doctors as with bad pilots.
u If they alter the rudder and commit a mistake in a calm
sea no one notices it; but if an adverse wind and violent
storms arise and the ship is cast on shore every one is convinced
that their ignorance and mistakes are to blame.
Even so is it with bad doctors, who form a majority among
their professional colleagues. When they are treating
lighter cases of illness, in which the greatest mistakes
may be committed, without serious results ensuing, their
want of skill will not strike the laity ; when on the other
hand they are called to a serious, violent, dangerous case
it becomes clear to every one that they know nothing
about it and give wrong directions." f " Ignorance is a
bad possession, a poor ornament, a constant illusion, a
picture of the fancy, affords no pleasure or happiness, and
is the nurse of timidity and of rashness." J The Hippokratic
doctors exhorted their pupils to diligence and
assiduous study. "Art is long, life short" they told
them,§ and " the healing art cannot be learned in a
hurry." || They strongly recommended perusal of the
medical treatises and with affecting piety recalled the
honest, if not always successful attempts, which the doctors
of an earlier period made to advance medical knowledge
and to raise it to the rank of a science.1[
The intimate relations between medicine and philosophy
which existed before HIPPOKRATES were made still more
binding by him and his school and endured to a later period.
" Philosophy and medicine have mutual need of one another
and each is illustrated by the other. The doctor, who is
also a philosopher stands in the highest position " writes a
* HIPPOKRATES op. cit. T. iv, 638. § HIPPOKRATES op. cit. T. iv, 458.
+ HIPPOKRATES op. cit. T. i, 590. || HIPPOKRATES op. tit. T. vi, 330.
X HIPPOKRATES op. cit. T. iv, 640. f HIPPOKRATES op. cit. T. i, 596.