Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/96

 on the columns of the temple,—for at this period writing was in general use,—and also that of dedicating to the god images which represented (sometimes with a remarkable degree of truthfulness) the pathological condition for which the patient sought relief, contributed very greatly to the substitution of sound learning for religious mysticism and poorly concealed humbuggery.

Among the interesting objects which may be seen at the Museum of the History of Medicine in Jena, Germany, there are several of these terra-cotta images (votive offerings) representing pathological conditions; and among them the writer noticed more particularly one which reproduced faithfully, though in diminutive size, the appearances presented by cancer of the female breast. (Fig. 7.) There were also a very carefully modeled statuette of the trunk of a woman affected with ascites, and an admirable representation of a case of facial paralysis. (Fig. 8.) These objects were obtained by Professor Meyer-Steineg on the occasion of a recent visit to the ruins of the temple of Cos and other similar ruins in Greece and Asia Minor. The British Museum possesses many objects of the same character.

It is not known at what precise date the iatreia, or small private hospitals, first made their appearance, but it was about the time when the religious character of the therapeutic work done in the Asclepieia gave place to treatment of a more distinctly medical character. Then, in addition to these iatreia, there were schools for gladiators and institutions in which gymnastic exercises were zealously cultivated; and in these places there was a frequent demand for advice in regard to questions of diet, and for surgical aid in the setting of broken bones, the reducing of dislocations, and the curing of bruises and sprains. As may readily be understood, the Asclepieia could not furnish the sort of professional aid which these institutions needed, and thus a further stimulus was given to the complete separation of the two kinds of medical practice—that connected with the temple and that conducted by outside physicians.