The undisputed works of Hippocrates are said to be the first and third book of the Epidemics; two books of the Praenotiones (a different work from the Prae-notiones Coacae, published by Elzevir in 1660, by Duretus at Paris, and with commentaries by Hollerius at Leyden, which is very certainly spurious), containing the Prognostics, and the second book of the Prorrhetica; De Diaeta in Acutis, in opposition to the Gnidian sentences; the Aphorismi; De Aere, Aquis et Locis; De Natura Hominis; De Humoribus Purgandis; De Ali-mento; De Articulis; De Fracturis; De Capitis Vulneri-bus; De Officina Medici; De Locis in Homine. This is nearly the enumeration of Haller;but Galen and Haller seem to have admitted tracts among the Hippocratic works, with too great facility. Gruner, who like Haller considered brevity, gravity, and the absence of theoretical reasonings to be the true test of the genuine writings of Hippocrates, differs in the application. He admits the oath, but rejects the treatise, De Natura Hominis, De Locis in Homine, De Humoribus, De Ali-mento, et De Articulis. Whether the oath be admitted or rejected, is of little importance; since it must be considered rather as an object of curiosity than of utility. The first of these rejected works was admitted, with hesitation, by Galen and Mercurialis, as containing many passages very distant from the manner and doctrines of Hippocrates; but it was retained, as containing some facts of importance. The second, though admitted by. Galen and Caelius, and though it agrees, in general, with the practice of Hippocrates, has been suspected on account of some passages of a very different description. Haller only asserts that it may be his work; and Mercurialis, who ascribes it to Hippocrates, thinks that he did not live to complete it.

Gruner and Mercurialis reject the tract He Humoribus, but add, that it merits attention. It has been indeed commended in every age, and illustrated with commentaries by Galen, Duretus, and Gunzius. The tract on Aliment, on the contrary, imitates only the terseness of Hippocrates, but betrays the author to be of a later sera, by the doctrines respecting the arteries and veins. The book on the Joints is evidently the work of Hippocrates, or, at least, of the author of the tract De Fractures, and universally admitted. It contains also an account of the luxation of the thigh, which the history of medicine uniformly attributes to Hippocrates, by recording a controversy between him and Ctesias on" this subject.

Yet even the undisputed works of Hippocrates must be received with some hesitation. The criteria by which they are decided arc, we have said, not infallible; for they assume a degree of uniform excellence, which perhaps few have possessed. The tract De Acre, Aquis et Locis, shows the author to have been an European; and various passages even in the most genuine works, may be adduced to prove that interpolations have crept in. Where then can we draw the line ? or need the line be drawn?

We have enlarged on this part of the subject to add the only conclusion which can be admitted, that the undisputed works of Hippocrates show rather the state of medicine in the earliest eras than form what may be styled the system of an individual. They are therefore objects of curiosity, rather than use; for the most important facts are scattered in a variety of modern works, and within the reach of the greater number of readers. Yet the writings of Hippocrates merit attention. Where the title of doctor is assumed merely as a claim to receive the fee of a physician, it is of little importance whether the practitioner can read: the world is contented to take his talents on trust; but the man who claims the rank of a regular, well instructed, physician, should not be ignorant of the language of Hippocrates, or of the state of physic at the earliest period of recorded observations. He will derive no little satisfaction from the polished terseness of the Hippocratic language, from the candid relation of facts, whether favourable or otherwise, from the firm undeviating integrity, which seems to have regulated the conduct of this father of medicine.

We have been led also to this inquiry from other views. Various are the authors who have treated of Hippocrates and his system, without knowing that, in the same volume, works most unworthy of any author of credit were confounded under his name. Each has been quoted with the same indiscriminate complacency, and it may be easily conceived what a motley mixture must be the result. Having thus pointed out where his real sentiments may be found, we shall very shortly point out what they apparently were.

The tenet of Hippocrates, that a knowledge of nature is the first principle .in medicine, has been quoted with great zeal, to prove that he who saw this position in so strong a light must have been acquainted with the structure and the functions of the body. Yet even this axiom seems not to have been suggested by Hippocrates, as it occurs in one of his doubtful works. That nature preserves health and cures diseases is a tenet more obvious, and must have often occurred in a practice so inert as that of the Coan sage. His anatomical knowledge was inconsiderable. In his work on the bones, one of doubtful authority, he describes the spine as consisting of twenty vertebrae only. The error is indeed corrected towards the end, but apparently by another hand. The vesiculae seminales are expressly described: as a series of vesicles on each side of the bladder. This fact has been quoted to show that he dissected human bodies; but the tract, in which the observation occurs, is pronounced to be spurious, even by Galen. That Hippocrates was acquainted with the circulation of the d, as some authors have contended, no longer requires a single remark.

Though his genuine account of the structure of the genital organs is confessedly incorrect, yet his ideas that the male and female semen are mixed in conception, that the sex is determined by the most powerful, and that, if the semen escapes from the female, impregnation is prevented, are principles still supported by many physiologists, and are, on the whole, highly probable. The reciprocal action of the warm and cold spirit, in promoting the growth of the foetus, is wholly imaginary. The soul, he supposes, is drawn in with the air; not with air as such, but as a vehicle of water and fire, and communicated through the vessels of the placenta to the foetus. His theory of the cause of labour pains, from the exertions of the foetus, in consequence of the want of nourishment, though long supposed to be true, will scarcely bear the test of rigorous examination; and indeed every supposed cause of labour supervening at the end of the ninth month appears to be equivocal. The reason which he assigns for the life of a foetus of seven months, while one of eight is generally dead, appears to be too refined, and in part imaginary. It has been said, that a woman, accused of adultery, because her child was like neither supposed parent, was acquitted on Hippocrates suggesting, that a picture, which resembled it, might have been in her bed chamber, which, on examination was found to be true. The story is told, however, by an obscure writer, Hieronymus; and Galen, who relates it as the tale of a former age, docs not attribute the decision to Hippocrates.