Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 18.djvu/204

192 relations to the healing art. To the Egyptian deity Isis, the wife and sister of Osiris, peculiar medical skill was attributed, and a multitude of diseases were regarded as the effects of her anger. According to tradition she had given unequivocal proof of her power by the restoration of her son Orus to life. She was the reputed discoverer also of several remedies, and even as late as Galen the materia medica contained several compounds which bore her name: thus, in the symbolical language of the Egyptian priestly physicians, the vervain was called the "tears of Isis."

According to the annals of Grecian mythology, Hygeia, daughter of Æsculapius, the god of medicine, was worshiped in the temples of Argos as the goddess of health. In art, Hygeia is represented as a virgin wearing an expression of benevolence and kindness, and holding in one hand a serpent which is feeding from a cup in the other. She was regarded as the goddess both of physical and mental health, thereby personifying the aphorism, "Mens sana in corpore sano." The Greeks also ascribed medical power to Juno, who, under the name of Lucina, was held to preside over the birth of children, and to Ocyroe, daughter of the Centaur Cheiron, who was renowned for his skill in surgery and medicine. The sorceresses Medea and Circe were said to make use of herbs in their enchantments and for the purpose of counteracting the effects of poisons. These and similar fables probably preserve in allegoric form facts connected with the practice of medicine by women in the remotest antiquity. The writings of Homer have been examined to ascertain his testimony, but, with the exception of slight reference to woman's part in nursing wounded warriors, he contributes nothing to the subject under consideration.

The learned among the Celts, the Druids, were at the same time judges, legislators, priests, and physicians. By persuading the people that they maintained intimate relations with the gods, they succeeded in imposing their authority on the ignorant masses. "Their wives, who were called Alraunes, exercised the calling of sorceresses, causing considerable evil by their witchcraft, but caring for warriors wounded in battle. They gathered those plants to which they attributed magic virtues and they unraveled dreams" (Dunglison).

The first female practitioner who received a medical education appears to be Agnodice, a young Athenian woman who lived about 300 To satisfy her desire for knowledge she disguised herself in male attire, and, braving the fatal results of detection, dared to attend the schools of medicine forbidden to her sex. Among her instructors was numbered Herophilus, the greatest anatomist of antiquity and the first who dissected human subjects. After completing her studies, Agnodice preserved her disguise and practiced her chosen calling in the Grecian capital with great success, giving particular attention to the diseases of her own sex. The physicians of Athens becoming jealous of Agnodice's great reputation and lucrative practice, summoned