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for the teeth, others for the parts about the belly, and others for internal disorders."

The embalmers, whose handiwork has itself made Egypt famous, and has astonished and perplexed modern nations, probably were included among the medical priests. Of them Dr. Watson remarks, that,

"Their occupation must have rendered them familiar with the internal structure of the body, and furnished them with useful insight into the nature, causes, and results of diseased action." (p. 16.)

For our own part, we confess that the account Herodotust gives of the operation of embalming the brains being drawn through the nostrils by an iron hook, and the incision in the side being made by means of a sharp stone-leads us to the belief that notwithstanding the frequency with which the operation of embalming was performed, little satisfactory knowledge could be gained from it. Indeed, it appears to have partaken much more of a religious than of a medical character, and was very probably not performed by the same class of priests who were charged with the treatment of disease. It is true that we read in Genesis, fiftieth chapter, "And Joseph commanded his servants, the physicians, to embalm his father: and the physicians embalmed Israel." But various learned commentators on this passage in the Old Testament, and among others, Bishop Kidder, have regarded the Hebrew word translated physicians to signify those merely to whom the care of embalming belonged. Contemporaneous with the Egyptian there was another nation, of whose history in many important particulars the sacred writings authoritatively inform us, concerning whom and whose institutions, therefore, we are not left in the same degree of doubt. We know that civilization with its attendant improvements and advances in the arts and sciences, had made very considerable progress in Egypt before the family of Israel, compelled by famine, were driven to take refuge there. And such being the case, we would naturally expect that the Jewish people, from their contact and intimate relationship with the Egyptians, during fully four hundred years, would receive from them much of that knowledge and skill with which they were endowed. In the writings of Moses we find abundant proof that, as in the case of the Egyptians, the Jewish priests were originally the physicians. It was to the Levites the people applied when affected by leprosy; from them the infected sought a cure; it was the priests who determined what individuals and families were to do.

"When a man shall have in the skin of his flesh a rising, a scab or bright spot, and it be in the skin of his flesh, like the plague of leprosy, then shall he be brought unto Aaron the priest, or unto one of his sons the priests; and the priest shall look on the plague in the skin of the flesh; and when the hair in the plague is turned white, and the plague in sight be deeper than the skin of the flesh, it is a plague of leprosy, and the priest shall look upon him and pronounce him unclean."

In this passage of the thirteenth chapter of Leviticus, and in what follows in that and the succeeding chapter regarding leprosy, we have Herodotus: Euterpe, cap. 84. D'Oyley and Mant's Bible.

+ Euterpe, c. 86.

a striking example of the power committed to the priests: they decided as to the nature of the disease-leprosy or not; and consequent on that decision was the course which they again ordered to be followed and observed. Nor is it in connexion with the disease of leprosy merely that the medical functions of the Jewish priests is exhibited. Regarding the precepts contained in the twelfth and fifteenth chapters. of Leviticus, Renouard truly observes, that after their perusal, "one cannot repress a sentiment of admiration for the wisdom and foresight which made such salutary regulations a religious duty." (p. 33.) How long the Jewish priests continued to be physicians also, we are unable accurately to determine. In the Apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus, 38th chapter, which has, from its style, been attributed to Solomon, but which, in any case, was written two hundred years before the birth of Christ, mention is for the first time made of the office of physician apart from that of priest.

"Honour a physician with the honour due unto him for the uses which ye may have of him, for the Lord hath created him. For of the Most High cometh healing, and he shall receive honour of the king.”

Passing now from this rapid glance at the condition of medicine in Egypt and among the Jews, we have to view it in Greece, still mythical and priest-ridden, antecedent to the Trojan war, and to that period in which, among the Greeks, we find materials the most ample and the most instructive for the history of medicine. Here it is unnecessary to follow the example of Le Clerc and Sprengel, and trace the history of the medical mythology of Greece, or even to mention the names of the numerous gods and goddesses, heroes or heroines, who were regarded as the inventors or cultivators of the various branches of medicine. Some of these-as Thoth, whom the Greeks called Hermes, and Isis—were borrowed from the Egyptians, others were of purely Grecian origin.

Leaving the period of mystic and primitive medicine, and in order to form a proper estimate of what the genius of Hippocrates effected for our science, we may now briefly inquire into the condition of medicine antecedent to the birth of him who has in all ages been truly regarded as its father, limiting this inquiry still further by directing our present attention to the temples of Esculapius, which, as Dr. Watson observes, "notwithstanding the speculations of philosophers, and the trainings of the Palestræ, were the first great foundations of medical knowledge among the Greeks." (p. 35.)

The priests of the temples of Esculapius or Asclepiada, knew well how to take advantage both of natural situation for their erection, and of the respect-amounting, indeed, to a feeling of veneration-with which they were regarded by those who sought their precincts. Cabanis has well observed, that

"Many cures must have been accomplished by the diversion which the patients experienced in their journeys to these temples, by an exercise to which perhaps they had been but little accustomed; by the invigorating effects which an elevated situation produces on man, and indeed upon the generality. of animals; and lastly, by the still more invigorating effects of hope."*

* Revolutions of Medical Science, p. 58.

But besides such methods of securing or promoting health as have now been referred to, and which may be classed under the head of Asclepiadæan hygiène, there is reason to believe that the priests of the temples or Asclepions resorted to various means of cure, according to their notion of the particular ailments under which the patients who consulted the divinity laboured. The Asclepiada we know prescribed bloodletting in certain cases, purgation or vomits in others, while friction, sea-bathing, and the use of mineral waters, were other remedies they often employed. Beyond all this, and exercising as it no doubt did a most powerful influence on the sick and on the sick folks' friends, was the mental influence which the doctor-priests of the temples knew only too well how to produce. Admission to the temples was forbidden to such as had not previously undergone certain means of purification; and when entrance was effected, the interrogation of the oracle was frequently delayed. Sometimes a day or a night, or two nights, were first spent, the patients meantime lying in the temples. Abstinence, prayers, fasting, sacrifices, followed. After all these preliminary rites had been gone through, and after the immolation of a ram or of a fowl, or, as at Cyrene, a goat, or at one of the other Asclepions any animal save this last, the will of the oracle was craved, and the response communicated by the priests.* At times but mysterious and uncertain information was conveyed. Sometimes the divinity deigned to appear under the form of a serpent devouring the cakes upon his altar; more frequently the eyes of the faithful and wondering sick were not treated to so close a manifestation of his presence. At certain times and on certain occasions the will of the god was communicated in dreams, and these were interpreted by the priests. The importance attributed to dreams, even at a later period, may be judged of by a perusal of the Hippocratic treatise “ περὶ ἐνυπνίων.”

The chief, and at the same time the most celebrated temples of Esculapius were those at Epidaurus in the Peloponnesus, at Pergamos in Asia, at Rhodes on the island of Cos, at Cnidos, and at Cyrene, a city of Lybia. Besides these, there were numerous others, both in Greece proper and in the Grecian dependencies. Schulze, under the head of "Notitia Asclepiorum," mentions and describes alphabetically little short of a hundred. It was customary for the priests in the Asclepions to report to new comers the history of the extraordinary cures which had been effected for former invalids, and particularly to signalize those cases which appeared in any degree to tally with theirs. The walls and pillars of the temples-and this is especially known to have been the case in those of Cos and of Cnidos, which was burnt in Hippocrates' time-were covered with inscriptions, detailing in shorter or longer terms the history of the diseases and the nature of the remedies which had at the advice of the deity been employed in these cases. Metal, marble, wood, stone, may all have been used for this purpose, according, probably, to the circumstances of affluence or poverty

It was a cock that Socrates (according to Plato), in his last interview with his friends, requested them to offer for him to Esculapius.

+ Historia Medicinæ a rerum initio ad annum urbis Romæ Dxxxv., p. 118.

in which the benefited parties were placed. Those who have visited the parish churches in the different Roman-catholic countries of the Continent, and more especially Southern Italy, will call to remembrance the manner in which the walls and pillars are covered by the so-called votive offerings, and will at once recognise in the ancient practice of the Grecian temples the quarter from which the latter may reasonably be assumed to have sprung. Scanty as the information was that these tablets conveyed, and better calculated, as they no doubt were, to fortify the piety of the faithful, than for any great end in the advancement of science, still we feel disposed to agree in the reflection of the learned author of the Revolutions of Medical Science," that

"However imperfect these descriptions of diseases and of their methods of cure may have been, their collection was nevertheless very valuable. They formed, as it were, the first rudiments of the art, and discovered some faint traces of the method of observation and experiment which alone is capable of placing it on a solid basis."

Antecedent to the time of Hippocrates, to which we have now to turn, a great revolution had been effected for medicine by the first or early philosophers, and of these Pythagoras, Heraclitus, and Democritus were the chief. Into the consideration of their particular views we cannot here enter, but it is only due to these philosophers to accord to them the merit of having secured in great measure for medicine its release and freedom from superstition. "They," says Cabanis, “transformed an occult and sacerdotal doctrine into a popular science, into a common art." In the four hundred and sixtieth year before the birth of Christ, Hippocrates, according to very general belief and expressed opinion, was born. Of the personal history of Hippocrates we know but little; that little, however, is so familiar to all, as to render it unnecessary here to recount it. As regards not a few of the particulars of his life and education, as well as of his doctrines and practice, differences of opinion among those who have made such the subjects of a peculiar and attentive study has prevailed;—to these Dr. Watson and M. Renouard allude, and we conceive that it would be the duty of a lecturer on the History of Medicine, after a careful investigation of the views entertained by all competent authorities, to unfold them; for assuredly it may at once be conceded that anything relating to the history of Hippocrates-" that divine old man," as Sydenham has expressively named him—is worthy of attentive consideration. When we consider the age in which Hippocrates lived, that at the period in question anatomy was scarcely practised; that physiology was virtually unknown; that with the exception of a few articles in the vegetable materia medica of Greece alone, was he able to find remedies wherewith to combat diseases, though it was in the operations of Nature herself he chiefly confided in the contemplation of his life and labours, surely we find abundant proof of his genius and true greatness. What was known before his time was small indeed, not entitling medicine to be dignified by the name of a science. The consideration of what, during subsequent ages, has been added to the stores of knowledge he collected what has been taken from these stores

as inaccurate and unimportant leads to the conviction which has in all ages been acknowledged, that by Hippocrates an era in medicine was formed. It was the power of observation which he so largely possessed, and so conscientiously employed, which caused Hippocrates to differ from all who preceded, from many physicians who came after him-joined to his high intellect, his exalted morality, and kindness of heart-it was this observing power that made him what he was. It is impossible to read a page of the genuine writings of Hippocrates, to peruse a single case, without being struck with the truth of this remark. The observation of individual cases of disease, the recording of these, marking the changes undergone daily, sometimes oftener, may have been, indeed very probably was, suggested to Hippocrates by the votive tablets deposited in the temples of Esculapius; but upon this, as Dr. Bostock* has well observed, "he so far improved as to be entitled to the merit of an inventor." And what was his invention other than the discovery of the method by which medicine is best studied, the patient is best ameliorated, the knowledge of the physician most extended? In all subsequent ages, too, this method gradually ripening to perfection, which it seems in our own day to have actually attained, has been regarded as the best for teaching an acquaintance with medicine, clinical medicine-the study of individual cases of disease at the bed-side-had in reality its origin in and from Hippocrates. Again, Hippocrates was the first who carefully watched the "juvantia et lædentia," as they have since been termed. He narrowly noticed the effects, good or bad, of his remedial applications, and endeavoured to remove or palliate individual symptoms. In this particular he was no less a discoverer than in the former, and what he did then, the wisest and the best informed physicians in all ages since have continued to follow him in doing.

Such were the chief improvements which Hippocrates introduced into, or effected for medicine; he pointed out that the first and great aim of the physician is to watch the operations of nature. He demonstrated the worthlessness of crude theories, and established incontestably that observation is the sole basis or foundation of medicine. The healing art in the hands of Hippocrates was, by his genius, and his genius alone, raised to the dignity of a science of experience and of facts. That distinguished position once acquired for medicine has never been lost. Regarding inedicine" as a principle of humanity, and not merely as a means for attaining profit and glory," Hippocrates was not content to instruct those of his own family alone-the plan followed by the Asclepiade-in the precious truths he had himself acquired, and therefore he earnestly desired, and eagerly sought to communicate his knowledge to strangers, and to those who had no claims of kindred to interest him in them. In this respect we may regard Hippocrates as the first and the greatest of medical reformers. Actuated by his genius no less than by his humanity, he soon saw the propriety, the necessity, indeed, of breaking through the system of unphilosophical exclusion which confined the physicians of Greece, as it were, to a single family. Can we doubt that the bold determinaSee his admirable article, prefixed to the Cyclopædia of Practical Medicine.

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