Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/63

 GREECE AND SCIENCE AND MEDICINE 57

That Xenophon^ for example^ reoommended black as a restorative in cases of snow-blindness^ does not entitle ns to suppose that therefore Xenophon had any medical knowledge.

Hippocrates the Great was certainly the first in Greece to commit to writing a body of knowledge dealing with the diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of disease.

It is nsual to trace the origin of Greek medicine to the worship of Asclepios (LatinS, u3Escnlapius) the God of Healing, son of Apollo. The cult of Asclepios was certainly very old and probably modelled on Egyptian lines. Sick people were brought to the temples of Asclepios just as to-day in Boman Catholic countries invalids are brought to shrines, or in all countries to spas or watering-places.

The priests of Asclepios or the Asclepiadae were not physicians so much as men who mingled with their religious activities a considerable amount of common-sense regarding the therapeutic power of mental suggestion. Hippocrates, who was not an Asclepiad but the chief per- sonage at the medical school of the island of Cos, belongs to the age of Pericles. It is proper that in the golden age of Greece's history, the Father of Medicine should have arisen. He is supposed to have been the son of Heraclides, an Asclepiad, and the midwife Phsenarete, and to have been born about 460 b.g.

The deservedly great fame of Hippocrates rests on his insistence that disease is a natural phenomenon, not some visitation of supernatural origin. He studies the sick man as a whole, entirely in the modern spirit, recognizing that we must observe closely in order first to learn the facts of the ailment, obtaining the natural history of the disease, and must recognize all the time that nature is in the main striving towards the recovery of the health. Of course some previous theo- retical guidance was assumed necessary, but Hippocrates came each day to a case like an unbiased natural philosopher approaching some prob- lem new to him.

In its Latin dress of viz medicatrix Naturae, the healing tendency of living matter is familiar to most of us. A great deal of the so-cajled Hippocratic writings are not from the hand of Hippocrates, many being later than his time; but enough that are genuine remain to convince us how high were the ideals of Hippocrates in the sphere of morals, no less than in that of medicine. The oath of Hippocrates is a noble docu- ment. Whether it was composed by Hippocrates himself may be doubted, but it accurately represents the high aims that Hippocrates had before him in his practise. Composed as it was in times long pre-Christian, it is to-day as worthy a guide for the conduct of the physician as can be found in any literature; and its obligation to keep professional secrets may well be pondered over by those members of our profession, who, in neglecting this part of the oath, are guilty of a grave offence against

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