Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/110



nor to the man, considered as a man; but the geniuses are indiscriminately diffused through both: the woman is naturally fitted for sharing in all offices, and so is the man; but in all the woman is weaker than the man.

Perfectly so.

Shall we then commit everything to the care of the men, and nothing to the care of the women?

How shall we do so?

It is therefore, I imagine, as we say, that one woman, too, is fitted by natural genius for being a physician, and another is not; one is naturally a musician, and another is not.

(From "The Republic" of Plato, translated by Spens.)

But tell me with reference to him who, accurately speaking, is a physician, whom you now mentioned, whether he is a gainer of money or one who taketh care of the sick? and speak of him who is really a physician.

One who taketh care, said he, of the sick.

Why then, said I, no physician as far as he is a physician, considers what is advantageous for the physician, nor enjoins it, but what is advantageous for the sick; for it hath been agreed that the accurate physician is one who taketh care of sick bodies, and not an amasser of wealth. Hath it not been agreed?

He assented.

(Plato, 428-547 B. C., translated by Spens.)

But Plato's knowledge of human anatomy and physiology was very crude and in some instances decidedly fanciful. In corroboration of this statement the following extract from the "Timaeus" may be quoted:—

And on this account, fearing to defile the Divine nature more than was absolutely necessary, they [the junior gods] lodged man's mortal portion separately from the Divine, in a different receptacle of the body; forming the head and breast and placing the neck between, as an isthmus and limit to separate the two extremes.

In the breast, indeed, and what is called the thorax, they seated the mortal part of the soul. And as one part of it was naturally better, and another worse, they formed the cavity of the thorax into two divisions (resembling the separate dwellings of our men and women), placing the midriff as a partition between them. That part of the soul, therefore, which partakes of fortitude and