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30 have had benevolent associations since the very earliest beginnings of society, and through these organizations they have always visited and relieved the sick, providing them with medicine and other things needful. This visiting and relief work appears to have been carried on by men. The Jews of ancient times also supported free public inns or hostels for travellers, and to these a house for the sick was sometimes attached. It is not, however, supposed that these were organized hospitals such as the Hindus maintained, but they were rather for temporary care in emergency cases.

There is historical abundance in the medical records of ancient and classic Greece. Beginning like other nations in ages of myth and source of legend, the course of Greek culture brings us in time to the great Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, whose teaching was based definitely on the natural sciences.

In mythical ages it was Apollo, the sun-god, who was the deity of health and medicine. His son Asklepios, a marvellous physician, became in turn deified and worshipped. The Asklepios myth was doubtless woven about a mortal of fame and skill, for it is traced to a fairly definite date, about thirteen centuries before Christ, and the two sons of