The healing gods of ancient civilizations / by Walter Addison Jayne.

  • Walter Addison Jayne
Date:
1925
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The healing gods of ancient civilizations / by Walter Addison Jayne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    >•• • INTRODUCTION IT is a matter of common knowledge that from the dawn of history the healing art has been more or less intimately connected with religion. During an¬ tiquity the bonds uniting them were inseparable, and for many centuries medicine was an integral part of religion. On the free soil of Hellas, however, restrained by no binding religious traditions and by no hierarchy, experi¬ ence with the remedies of folklore and critical obser¬ vations of disease permitted by an unfettered personal judgment, backed by liberal, speculative, constructive thought, developed, under Hippokratic influence, a scien¬ tific spirit, ethical ideals, and a definite line of cleavage. The healing art, free for the first time from sacerdotal surveillance directed by an organized priesthood, began to be studied on its merits, both within and without the temples. The scientific method, the germ of all future progress, was then introduced, and theories were put to the test. The breach with religion, once created, widened slowly as medicine was independently studied by an ever- increasing number of enthusiastic disciples with honest purpose and open, analytical minds. Thereafter medicine never ceased to assert its right to its own development, but religion, always concerned with human destiny, physi¬ cal and spiritual, though relaxing its hold, continued to retain a powerful influence over the healing art and too often restricted efforts looking to advancement. Notwith¬ standing persistent struggles for intellectual freedom, it was not until the nineteenth century that medicine, with