Outlines of the history of medicine and the medical profession / by Joh. Hermann Baas ; translated, and in conjunction with the author rev. and enl., by H.E. Handerson.
- Johann Hermann Baas
- Date:
- 1889
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Outlines of the history of medicine and the medical profession / by Joh. Hermann Baas ; translated, and in conjunction with the author rev. and enl., by H.E. Handerson. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.
99/1198 (page 85)
![whose interpretation was the business of the priests. The latter now, however, ordered certain remedies, e. g. cathartics, emetics, bleeding—according; to all accounts to an enormous extent,—fasting etc. ]f a cure followed, then the will of the god had been obeyed; but if not, then the patient had always in some way committed an over- sight,—just as is the case with some doctors to-day. If the patient was cured, the convalescent then offered consecrated offerings, e. g. golden, or ivory, or terra cotta (museum in Naples) models of the diseased parts (anathemata); or he hung medals upon the legs of the god, which were then carried off by the priests. In certain emples the medical history of the convalescent and the remedies employed in the case were inscribed upon the posts of the temple, or upon suspended votive tablets, which thus served a purpose similar to the crutches of the cured hung up in certain of our baths and pilgrim-resorts of to-day, but also had this advantage, that they furnished to the later science of therapeutics its first empirical principles. The purport of one of these tablets of a later period was as follows : Julian, after spitting blood, seemed hopelessly lost. The god ordered him to come and take from the altar pistachio nuts, and to eat these for three days mixed with honey. He was restored and came and thanked the god before the people. We see that then, as now, confiding simplicity enjoyed the best claim to success. Yet such theurgic customs had likewise their realistic side, if such an expression is allowable. If, for instance, a valuable remedy was discovered, its composition was engraved upon the posts of the temple, or upon special tablets, and thus was finally- collected a kind of pathology and a store of drugs, such as may have given origin e. g. to the Coan Prognoses'. The priests of Hvsculapius were not. however, the direct founders of Grecian medicine. This was the work of the Asclepiarlae, guilds of purely lay physicians, which existed in various localities, even where there were no famous sanctuaries of yEsculapius (e. g. in Crotona), and whose members—like the Kali Tatri of the Orient to-day—traveled about in the practice of their profession and to make their fortune. These were called to attend the sick, or were visited bjT the latter at their own residences. Some of them acquired special reputation and won posthumous fame, even as writers. Doubtless these were the most highly gifted and the best educated, who gained their higher education chiefly from intercourse with celebrated men whom they met in their travels. In fact it was in this way that the ancient Greeks generally obtained their higher education, and not from frequenting schools. Of course the most famous Asclepiads were great travelers, even Hippocrates, the most distinguished of them all. These Asclepiadae, however, who were considered, and professed to be descendants of ^Esculapius, originally appropriated the substance of the medicine of the temples, and increased it by such drugs as were discovered by any of their members. Possibly (as there is nothing new under the sun) some of the original assistants of the priests, entrusted with the administration or preparation of the medicaments prescribed by the latter (in spite of their generally theurgic treatment), may have finally emancipated themselves entirely, and set up business on their own account in the neighborhood of tlie temples. These gradually expanded their business beside that of the priests, just as we shall see done mutatis mutandis in Salerno, which was also originally a place of miraculous cures, and then developed into that school of physicians, which, during the Middle Ages, was as famous as any of the Asclepions. These Asclepiada1 bequeathed1 their knowledge to their descend- 1. All the earliest intellectual creations were preserved by oral tradition from teacher to pupil, and it was not until a later period that they were fixed hy writing. In order to be learned more easily they were composed in verse, e. g. the Vedas, Homer, the verses of the Druids etc. Among the Greeks the Aoidoi were the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21035258_0099.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
