Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/27

 been adopted, however, in the preparation of the present outline sketch combines some of the features of both the Pagel and the Neuburger schemes.

Periods in the History of Medicine.—There are nine more or less distinctly defined periods in the history of medicine, to wit:—

through prehistoric ages to a date which differs for different parts of the world. The duration of this period, in any case, is to be reckoned by thousands of years.
 * Primitive medicine.—This period extends

the cultivated oriental races of whose history we possess only a very fragmentary knowledge.
 * The medicine of the East—that is, of

antiquity''—the pre-Hippocratic period of Greek medicine.
 * ''The medicine of the classical period of

most flourishing period of Greek medicine.
 * The medicine of the Hippocratic writings—the

the centre of greatest intellectual activity was located at Alexandria, Egypt''.
 * ''The medicine of the period during which

teachings exerted a preponderating influence upon the thought and practice of physicians in every part of the civilized world up to the seventeenth century of the Christian era. This period is also characterized by the gradual diminution of the influence of Greek medicine.
 * The medicine of Galen—an author whose

period which includes a large part of the preceding epoch. Its most characteristic feature is the important part played by the Arabs in moulding the teachings and practice of the medical men of that time (ninth to fifteenth century).
 * The medicine of the Middle Ages—a

(fifteenth and sixteenth centuries): ''The medicine of the Renaissance period''—characterized chiefly by the adoption of the only effective method of studying the anatomy of man—the actual dissection of human bodies.

(from the beginning of the seventeenth century to the present time): Modern medicine.—This epoch may with advantage be divided into two periods—the first extending to about the year 1775, soon after which