Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/620

614 tombs. The practise of medicine was, however, purely empirical, and the rules followed in the treatment of particular diseases were often of great age. The second king of Egypt is said to have been a physician, and another is reported to have written a book on anatomy. The private physicians of both Cambyses and of Darius were Egyptians. The name of the latter brings to mind that of his son Artaxerxes whose private physician was a man of considerable importance in his day, outside of his profession. Ktesias was a native of Knidos, a contemporary of Hippocrates, and no doubt personally known to him. Here we have again the philosopher and the physician in the same person. After acquiring considerable reputation in his own country he had the misfortune to fall into the hands of the Persians. Subsequently he was introduced at court, which proved the beginning of his good fortune. After the battle of Cunaxa he healed the wound inflicted upon his master by the brother of the latter. Later he was employed on a diplomatic mission to his native land; and thus after an absence of seventeen years returned home about 398 to remain for the rest of his life. That he was well treated by the master whose slave he became, according to Persian parlance, and had abundant opportunities for study, is evident from the fact that he compiled a 'History of Persia,' a work in which he charged Herodotus with frequent falsehoods in what he relates about that country. His scholarly tastes are evinced by this extensive collection, as it must have been, since it was divided into twenty-three books. He also composed a small work on India and one on geography. He is not known to have left any medical writings, and his reputation for impartiality as a historian is not very good. Still it must be regarded as a great misfortune that his extant remains are so meager.

In later times many Egyptian physicians practised in Rome; for to have studied in the land of the Nile, or, still better, to have been born there, was regarded as a special recommendation. Here too magic formulas of all kinds were in frequent use, not only in the compounding of medicines, but in their application. According to Pliny cadavers were dissected by order of the Ptolemies for the purpose of studying fatal diseases. But it can hardly be inferred from this statement that anatomy was regularly pursued in this way, or that dissection was a common practise.

Pliny, who had no very high opinion of the medical fraternity for reasons that will appear farther on, makes the assertion that Rome managed to get along six hundred years without physicians. This is manifestly an exaggeration, since many Greeks professed the healing art in the imperial city much earlier than 150 B. C. But neither did Rome produce a philosopher in the proper sense of the term; certainly no man who loved wisdom for its own sake. The Romans were,