Zorastro : a romance / by Creswick J. Thompson [pseud.].

  • Charles Thompson
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Zorastro : a romance / by Creswick J. Thompson [pseud.]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    CHAPTER VIII At the clawn of the sixteenth century, the art of medicine, which had then reached the lowest point of its decadence, was split up into two divisions, each of which contended for supremacy. The leaders of one based their belief on the Arabian school, and claimed to follow in the footsteps of Rhazes and Avicenna its founders ; while their opponents professed to practise the art as laid down by the ancient Greeks, and avowed adherence only to the precepts of Hippocrates, Galen, and other great lights. The former chiefly relied on the adminis- tration of physic in prodigious quantities, while the latter pinned their faith on blood- letting, cutting, and cauterising at every pos- sible opportunity. At this period the whole art was but a mixture of religion, superstition, and magic. The physicians who dwelt in