This lecture is not intended for those who are accustomed to hear discourses which inquire more deeply into the human constitution than is profitable for medical stduy.  I am not going to assert that man is all air, or fire, or water, or earth; or infact anything but what manifestly composes his body; let those who like discuss such matters...<B>They all, theorizing, draw the same deduction, asserting that there is one basic substance which is unique and the basis of everything</B>; but they call it by different names, one insisting that it is air, another that it is fire, another water, another earth...Thus they serve, rather, to establish the theory of <B>Melissus</B>.

Hippocratic Writings page 260