Elisha Bartlett : a Rhode Island philosopher : an address delivered before the Rhode Island Medical Society, Dec. 7, 1899 : with an appendix containing Dr. Bartlett's sketch of Hippocrates / by William Osler.

  • William Osler
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Elisha Bartlett : a Rhode Island philosopher : an address delivered before the Rhode Island Medical Society, Dec. 7, 1899 : with an appendix containing Dr. Bartlett's sketch of Hippocrates / by William Osler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the first bloom of that resj^lendent personal beauty which made him seem to the eyes, even of the Greeks, more like the radiant apparition of a young Apollo, than any form of mere earthly mould — subdued, for the first time in his life, and probably for the last — by the spectacle before him, of his dying relative and guardian — to reverence, tenderness, apd truth. Sophocles, his old companion in arms, is there; and near him, in his coarse mantle, and with unsandaled feet, may have stood a grandson of Aristides, still poor with the honorable poverty of his great an- cestor. Conspicuous amidst this group of generals, admirals, statesmen, orators, artists, poets, and philosophers,— in rank and fortune, in social position, in reputation, in learning, culture, and refinement, their equal and associate, sits the young physician of Cos. Al- ready had his rising fame reached Athens, and when the city, overcrowded with the inhabitants of Attica, driven from their homes by the armies of Sparta, was smitten with the pestilence, he was summoned from his island home in the ^gean, to stay, if he could, the march of the destroying angel, and to succor with his skill those who had fallen under the shadow of its wings. On a gentle declivity, looking toward the south-west, in the small island of Cos, lying in the ^gean sea, a few stadia from the coast of Asia Minor, stands the temple of .lEsculapius. Its Ionic columns, and its ornamented friezes of Pentelican marble, glitter and flash in the sun-light, as we watch them through the sway- ing branches of the ancient oaks, chestnuts, and elms, that make the sacred grove of the temple. In the centre of the principal room, or cella, of the temple, and fronting the entrance, stand statues of ^sculapius, and his daughters, Hygiea and Panacea. On each side of the entrance are marble fonts of lustral water, for the preliminary purification of the sick visitors to the temple. Near a column of the temjde, and holding a roll of papyrus in his left hand, stands Hijjpocrates. Gathered about him, in pic- turesque little groups, there is a company of Greek youths. Their tasteful and elegant costumes, their earnest and intelligent faces, and their general air and bearing, all show plainly enough the superior refinement and culture of the class to which they be- long. They are medical students, young Asclepiades, who have assembled here from the several states of Greece, to acquire the clinical skill and experience of the great surgeon and physician of Cos, and to listen to the eloquent lessons of the illustrious professor. Thirty years have gone by since we met him at the bedside of the djdng Pericles. The lapse of this generation has thinned his flowing hair, and sprinkled his beard with silver.
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