[Life is short, art is long... Ancient medicine and philosophy]

For more than 2000 years, nothing has had so great an influence on western medicine as the Hippocratic writings of Aristotle and Galen. However, the legacy from these writings tends to be ambiguous, and two-fold. Some of them are clearly empirical, and make no attempt to philosophize about ultimate or proximate causes of disease. These are generally regarded as "genuinely Hippocratic". Other writings are dogmatic (rationalistic), and try to explain health and disease on the basis of pre-conceived ideas of the four humours of the human body. This distinction between empiricists and dogmaticians can be traced through Alexandria and Rome to modern times. The doctrine of the four humours does not seem to have had a beneficial effect on medical practice in Ancient Greece and Rome.