Page:Botanic drugs, their materia medica, pharmacology, and therapeutics (1917).djvu/17

 Introduction

ISIS, the Queen and afterwards the Goddess, was called the "Mother of Medicine." Indeed, in ancient Egypt, eleven thousand years before Christ, both men and women were skilled in medicine: it was there botanic medication had its origin. Hippocrates, the "Father of Medicine," many centuries later, knew less of the remedial actions of vegetable drugs than did the women of the, to him, ancient times.

"Paracelsus states with regard to his famous writings that they were but the compilation of knowledge obtained from the 'Wise Women.' It may be noticed that it is the women and not the men of primitive races, as a rule, who are learned in the healing properties of plants. . . . From the earliest times, women acquired a knowledge of the human body, of science, of natural laws, and of the medicinal properties of herbs." 1

Hippocrates left no regular treatise on materia medica, but he made, as did also the Iliad and the Odyssee, frequent references to the work of Polydauma, Origenia, and Aspasia—Greek women who were learned in the making of soothing potions.

Theophrastus developed the botany of materia medica in a scientific manner; but Dioscorides was the first authoritative writer on the therapeutics of plant remedies. His books listed seven hun-

1 Maude Glasgow, in Medical Record, December 4, 1915.

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