Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/627

Rh as having sent a pestilence upon the Greek host. In his discourse on ancient medicine—a singular title for a book written more than four centuries before the christian era, whether by Hippocrates or some one else—we find the idea of the survival of the fittest clearly indicated; in fact, many of the Greeks had more than an inkling of it. His apprehension of gradual evolution is also shown by the assertion that the vegetables used for food are the outcome of experiments with coarser kinds and the deleterious effects upon the health of those that were rejected. He takes the ground that a man can not understand the medical art unless he knows, as far as that is possible, what man is. He holds that the physician should be skilled in nature; but what he defines as 'nature' is not cosmological, it is rather the etiology of disease and the laws of hygiene. He also speaks of the 'common herd of physicians.' Evidently professional pride is not the latest born of time's offspring. Among the most interesting documents included among the writings of Hippocrates is the physician's oath. While it may not have been formulated by the master, it undoubtedly represents the principles of his school. Thus early had Greek physicians formed themselves into a guild and pledged themselves to certain rules of conduct. These guilds were, however, not secret associations or fraternities and had no professional arcana different from those of the present day. The novitiate pledged himself to regard his teacher as equally dear with his own parents; to hold his sons in equal esteem with his own brothers; to teach them and his own sons the medical art without fee, if they desired to learn it; to keep aloof from whatever is detrimental to health; to give no deadly drug even when asked; to pass his life in purity and holiness; to abstain from any harmful act in whatsoever house he might enter for the benefit of the sick; to divulge no secrets connected with his professional practise, and to refuse to administer to any woman a drug that will produce abortion. It is evident from the oath here given in substance that the morals of the medical fraternity were, at least in theory, far in advance of those of the general public and of many well-known philosophers by profession.