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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    It would be gratifying if we could know something of his per- sonal history during this long and active period of his life. We know but little, however, and this little is dim and shadowy. That he had led a life of activity and usefulness, and of growing reputation, and that he had visited various portions of Greece, is certain. What he himself had witnessed, and must have felt, we know well enough. He had seen, for this whole jjeriod, his country torn and distracted by civil war — state arrayed against state, city against city; he had mourned over the disastrous ex- pedition of Athens against Syracuse; and shooting athwart all the murky darkness of this troubled and stormy jjeriod — instead of the benignant sun of Pericles — the baleful rays of the star of Alcibiades, setting at last, but too late for his country, in ignominy and blood. I have not departed from the strictest limits of historical pro- bability, in assigning to Hippocrates the high powers of didactic and persuasive oratory. One of the most potent agencies in the development of Greek intellect, and the advancement of Greek civilization, consisted in the general prevalence of public teaching and recitation. For many successive centuries, it was from the living lips of bards and i-hapsodists, kindled with coals from the glowing altars of patriotism and religion,— and not through the medium of any cold and silent written records, that the immortal strains of the Iliad and the Odyssey rang through the land, and were made literally familiar as household words. Even up to an advanced period of Grecian culture, the art of writing was but little practiced; and it was by speech, and not by reading, that statesmen, poets, orators, philosophers, and historians acted upon their disciples and the public. Then, the evidence derived from his writings is full and conclusive, that Hippocrates was not merely a skillful physician, but that he was learned in all the philosophy and literature of his age. Plato speaks of the Ascle- piades, his cotemporaries, as men of elegant and cultivated minds, who, in the explanations they give to their patients, go even to the heights of philosophy. It is no violation, then, of historic probability, to presume that the great philosophic and practical physician — who had been trained in this unrivaled school of human speech — who had listened to the eloquence of Pericles in the public assemblies, or been charmed by the “ colloquial magic of Socrates,” in the market-place, should have been himself, also, a master of this high power of instructive and persuasive speech. It is by no forced or illegitimate exercise of the fancy, that we look back to the scene I have endeavored to sketch. And with little danger of departing far from the truth, we may imagine what would be likely to constitute the theme of his discourse, especially if the occasion was one of unusual interest or solemnity,
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