The history of medicine : comprising a narrative of its progress from the earliest ages to the present time, and of the delusions incidental to its advance from empiricism to the dignity of a science / by Edward Meryon ... Volume I.

Edward Meryon

Date:: 1861

Credit: The history of medicine : comprising a narrative of its progress from the earliest ages to the present time, and of the delusions incidental to its advance from empiricism to the dignity of a science / by Edward Meryon ... Volume I. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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$ASCLEPIADES. tliat if any one of us were to set seriously to work to study the doctrine of probabilities, it would be found that these oracles, in their guesses at truth, approach it just as often as any other person not mesmerised would do with an equal amount of knowledge respecting the subjects, which may be supposed to be the absolute minimum. ^ Predictions and their fulfilment are well calculated to impress the uninformed, whose faith rests on such coincidences; and the clairvoyantes hit on them just often enough to illustrate a remark which ]\Ir. JMill has made in his System of Logic, that Faith in delusions is quite capable of holding out against a great multitude of failures, provided it be nourished by a reasonable number of casual coincidences between the prediction and the event. The Asclepiades placed their chief rehance on those hygienic observances which pre- vail more or less at the present day, for the maintenance of health. Temperance, cleanhness, air, and exercise were theu- great resources ; but then- medical apphances, apart ft^om their prayers and incantations, were of the most simple kind, and directed chiefly to the cure of wounds. Podalirius and Machaoii, the two sons of j^Jsculapius, accompanied the Greeks to the siege of Troy in the double capacity of warriors and physicians. They paid httle attention to constitutional ailments, but directed their care chiefly to external wounds. Thus, of Machaon it is related, when Menelaus was wounded by the arrow of Pandarus, that he Suck'd tlie blood, and sovereign balm inftised, Whicli Chiron gave, and iEsculapius used. And, when he himself retired from the field severely wounded, he immediately partook of a mess of meal mixed with cheese and wine, practising in his own per-$