Grey area due to semantics, there were cases in which it "appeared" to work; and the principles of empiricism were not firmly enough established that people back realized it was an unproven hypothesis. The distinction between hypothesis and theory wasn't as firm back then. One of the drawbacks of scholasticism. (See also Galen...; or some analogy to Owen Barfield's "ancient unities"...)
Cheers!
Appearances don't count. It doesn't predict anything, because it doesn't explain reality. In most of those old cases that amount to hypothesis, the logic wasn't even that good. In hypothesis like "caloric", testing which could have been done, but was not, until someone finally realized that(Joule, I think.). They failed to note that the heat generated was a function of friction, not cutting. What matters is having a precise definition, independent of state of knowledge, instrumentation and "philosophy".