Psychotherapy : including the history of the use of mental influence, directly and indirectly, in healing and the principles for the application of energies derived from the mind to the treatment of disease / by James J. Walsh.
- James Joseph Walsh
- Date:
- 1912
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Psychotherapy : including the history of the use of mental influence, directly and indirectly, in healing and the principles for the application of energies derived from the mind to the treatment of disease / by James J. Walsh. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
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![the first university medical sciiool in the world's history. Both ])racticed dissection with assiduit_y, and, while it is Herophilus' name that is associated with the torcular within the skull, and it was he who gave the name calamus scrip tori ita to certain appearances in the fourth ventricle, and otherwine stamped his personality on the study of the brain, it is to ErasistraUjs that we have to turn for a typical example of the mental physician. Erasistratos, about 300 B. C, recognized the valves of the heart, gave them the names tricuspid ahd'^gmoid, and, like his great colleague, studied particularly the nervous system. He seems to have distinguished the nerves of motion from those of sensation, recognized their different functions and the different direc- tions in which they carried impulses, and thought the brain the most important organ in the body. The story is told that he was summoned in consultation to see the son of Seleukos, surnamed Nikator, the Macedonian general of Alexander the Great, m^io became ruler of Babylonia. The illness of this son, Antiochos, had baffled the skill of the court physicians. While Erasistratos was feeling his patient's pulse, the stepmother of the young prince entered the room. She, the second wife of his father, was young and handsome, and Erasistratos noted that there was great perturbation of the pulse as soon as the stepmother came in. He correctly surmised that the young man was in love with the lady and that his illness had been occasioned by the feeling that his love was hopeless. The very sharing of his secret seems to have started the young man's cure, and Erasistratos' wisdom and medical skill became a proverb throughout the East. V PSYCHOTHERAPY AT ROME Galen.—Galen, whom we are prone to think of as a Latin because so much of his work was done at Eome, but whose works have come to us in Greek, and who was a disciple of the Greek school of medicine, brought up under Greek influence in his native town of Pergamos, re-echoed Hippocrates' expressions as to the necessity for securing the patient's confidence and setting his mind at ease. The story in the Arabian Nights of his experience with the quack, which is known to most people, shows clearly how the place of mental influence in the relief of human ills must have been brought home to him. For nearly fifteen centuries his works continued to be the most read of medical documents. Nine tenths of all the physicians of education and influence, confidently looking to him as their master, kept copies of his works constantly near them, and turned to them for medical guidance as they would to the Bible for spiritual aid. The book of Galen which is usually placed first among his collected works shows how much more important is the mind than the body for human happi- ness, and insists on mental interests as making life worth while. In it he describes the good physician, and says that to be a good physician a man must also be a good philosopher, VVhen he comes to talk of the different sects in medicine—for even in his time there were groups of men who founded their medical practice on very different principles—he points out that Ihe members of the different medical sects, while all employing practically the same remedies, do so on quite different principles, and yet get about the same](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b23984600_0034.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
