The medical diseases of Egypt. Part 1 / by F.M. Sandwith.

  • Sandwith, F. M. (Fleming Mant), 1853-1918.
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The medical diseases of Egypt. Part 1 / by F.M. Sandwith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    rupting misdeed, and especially the seduction of women and of boys, free or slaves. Whatever I may see or hear in the course of my practice, or even outside the line of my professional duty in the lives of men that ought not to be noised abroad, I will not speak of, considering that such things should be kept secret. If I keep this oath without breaking it, may it be given unto me happily to enjoy life and the exercise of my art, ever held in honour among men. If I violate it, and forswear myself, may the opposite fate be my lot.” Anatomy was chiefly studied on animals, and physicians were necessarily ignorant of it until human dissection was allowed for the first time for a few years about B.C. 300 in Alexandria. We are indebted to Celsus for most of our knowledge of the Alexandrian school, which remained famous till A.D. 300. The anatomist Herophilos was one of the heads of this school, and is reported, when asked who is the best doctor, to have answered: “ He who knows how to distinguish the possible from the impossible.” He is famous as having been the earliest experimental physio¬ logist. The books of Celsus fill up the historic gap between the Greek pioneers and Galen. Pliny says that the Egyptians examined bodies after death to ascertain the nature of the disease of which people had died, but this habit was probably discontinued when dissection was forbidden. Greek physicians continued to travel to Egypt where they studied at Heliopolis, until the Ptolemies inaugurated the school at Alexandria for the followers of Herophilus and his rival Erasistratus, some of whom became famous lithotomists. Galen, the Greek, studied medicine in Alexandria about A.D. 147—158, and later settled in Rome, where he continued his anatomical studies as far as possible on men and animals, but always advised his pupils to visit Alexandria, because there they would have the advantage of demonstrations on real human bones. He was the first to declare physiology to be the basis of medicine, and with him physiology became for the first time an independent science. For thirteen centuries his doctrines dominated medical teaching. In the time of Galen, Alexandria was the centre of the intellectual world, but during the decline of the Roman empire interest in science decayed more and more, and medicine again degenerated into magic, astrology
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