Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/62

 S6 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

Possibly Pythagoras is best known to people generally as the orig- inator of the doctrine of metempsychosis^ the transmigration of sonls. To do penance for sins^ the soul of a man might have to inhabit the body of a lower animal, i.e., undergo a lower reincarnation. You re- member when Malvolio is in prison^ the clown, disguised as a priest, asks him:

G. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild-fowl f

M. That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird.

C. What thinkest thou of his opinion f

M. I think nobly of the soul, and in no way approve his opinion.

G. Fare thee well, remain then still in darkness; thon shalt hold the opinion of

Pythagoras ere I wiU allow of thy wits and fear to kill a woodcock lest thou

dispossess the soul of thy grandam.

So that the origin of this joking was, by Shakespeare's day, already 2,000 years old.

The writings of Aristotle which deal with zoology and embryology are so well known that they need only be mentioned at this time. Of course it would be easy to show in how many things he was mistaken in regard to animal structure and function, nevertheless he was the first systematic student of zoology.

Long before Aristotle's time, however, Thales (639-544 b.c.) had speculated that all kinds of life, animal and vegetable, were derived from some one, common, living substance, thus anticipating our concep- tion of protoplasm by about twenty-three centuries.

Empedocles of Agrigentum (50^r-443) wrote on the development of the fetus, and gave us the terms amnion and chorion which are in use at the present day. Anazagoras had pondered on the power which the various organs of the body have of absorbing different forms of nourish- ment from the common blood. It is an unsolved problem yet

"So doubt there was the practise of the healing art before Hippoc- rates, just as there were poets before Homer. A learned German has collected all the allusions to physicians or the healing art in Greek poetry before the time of Hippocrates. It appears that such medical knowledge as existed before Homer was all of Egyptian origin. Homer mentions bones, sinews and intestines. He alludes to wounds and to the activities of surgeons with the army in the Troad, but never men- tions internal diseases. He speaks of a woman Agamede who knew of all the healing herbs, and of Helen giving Telemachus nepenthe or the drink of oblivion. The onion, honey and wine are mentioned as drugs; and the bath followed by inunction as a therapeutic measure. Homer names two medical men, Machaon and Podalirius, sons of Asclepios, an unrivalled physician. Of the former he said :

A wise physician skilled onr woonds to heal Is more than armies to the public weal.

1" Twelfth Night," Act IV., Sc H.

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