Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/49

33 Care of Sick in Ancient World 33 the dream gods were supposed to appear to them and prescribe their treatment. There were two of these sleeping porches, one for men and one for women, so that there must also have been women nurses or attendants. After they had received their prescriptions, the sick were distributed among the small wards. Epidauros accommodated about five hundred patients. There was a chief admin- istrator whose position was like that of our hospital superintendent, and there were various grades of attendants, among them two sets of priestesses, one of whom were assistants in the holy mysteries, and the other, from their title "basket-bearers," may have had practical duties, or these priestesses may have had supervisory charge of the sick, as head nurses, for undet them were bath attendants and helpers who waited on the sick and carried those who were unable to walk. Medical schools maintained by the Asklepiades are traced back as far as 770 B.C. and under their influence a public system of free medi- Hippocrates, cal relief for the poor grew up which father of lasted down to the Christian era. A modem medicine specially famous school was at Cos, and there Hippocrates was bom, 460 years B.C. He is believed to have been a direct descendant of As- klepios. Hippocrates' time was the age of Pericles, i