Page:The Harveian oration 1904.djvu/41

20 THE HARVEIAN ORATION, 1904 as a founder of our art, and the Asklepieia where throughout Greece and Magna Graecia medicine was practised and taught, in greater degree should we reverence the much more venerable I-em-hotep and view with interest the primaeval medicine temples and hospitals of Egypt. The evidence of this priority from Egyptian sources is absolutely conclusive, but in addition we have corroborative evidence from European authorities.

In the ancient writings of the pseudo- Apuleius Hermes is described as speaking to the youthful Asklepios as follows' 'Thine an- cestor, the first discoverer of medicine, hath a temple consecrated to him in the Libyan mount- ains near the Nile, where his body lies, while his better part, the spiritual essence, hath returned to the heavens, whence he still by his divine power helps feeble men as he formerly on earth succoured them by his art as a physician.' In the Cairo Museum probably many of the present audience have seen the sepulchral stele of Shemkhetnankh, a great physician of the fifth dynasty, who was contemporary with King Sahura, and who is described in the stele as the principal physician of the Royal Hospital. His name, which is doubtless a title given to him by the monarch, means 'He who possesses the things that give life.' It is interesting to find that five thousand years ago a hospital should exist associated with, and under the patronage 1. Pseudo-Apul., Asklepios C, 37