"There have elevated have practised that art." been," he says "a large number of physicians who have been numbered among the saints; several pontiffs, emperors, and kings have practised medicine; also queens and other women of quality, and even gods and goddesses. But more than all others, there have been philosophers and poets among the ancients who have professed the same art." And the author, Tiraquean, concludes his exhaustless essay by giving particulars of the standing of such persons as have been devoted to medicine, arranging the list in alphabetical order. Many of these distinguished persons have written brief essays on the art." The fact that man in his primitive state resorted to means and agencies of some sort for the relief of wounds, bruises, sprains, broken bones, etc., did not constitute him a physician. That was the function of the nurse. It is not unlikely that Adam knew enough for that; so do the ant, the bee, and other insects; the cat and dog and other animals; the savages of Borneo and Fiji; the aborigines of this continent, and other primitive tribes. But it would be a stretch of propriety to characterize such simple common-sense procedures as the art of medicine. Rather are they related to the art of nursing, which preceded the medical art, and was its initiative. To people of a very different sort, to ancient Greece, the land of life and light, of liberty, of heroism, of 1 Vide Histoire de la Médecine, book 1, part 1. creative art, industry, and literature, of lovers of truth and beauty, are we to look for the development of the art and science of Medicine as it is known to-day, even if we concede its origin to the Egyptians. The subject may be divided conveniently into six epochs or periods, namely: First: Period of Mythical Medicine. Second: Period of Hippocratian Medicine. Fourth: Period of Mediæval Medicine. Fifth: Period of the Renaissance. Sixth: Period of the Twentieth Century. PART II THE LEGACY OF MEDICINE TO CIVILIZATION Having set forth the predicate of the Art and Science of Medicine in the foregoing pages, it may not be without interest briefly to point out the part that the Sciences related to Medicine have played in promoting human progress, and the legacy that they have left to civilization. The claims of Medicine to the gratitude of mankind have been recognized in words of appreciation by publicists the world over. Its professors and practitioners have been universally eulogized as types of moral heroism by no means second to those of saints and martyrs whom the world delights to honor. The altruistic life is noble; moral heroism is grand; to die in defence of one's country, or for the cause of truth and righteousness, commands the reverent respect of the multitude. But surely the love of truth displayed by men of science and philosophy; the degree of self-denial and unselfish devotion to the service of mankind, without hope or thought of reward, that men of science exhibit, is second in grandeur to no class of heroic deeds in all history. There are Dalton, Cavendish, and Lavoisier, turning away from the world in their greater love of studies in chemistry; Harvey, withdrawing from the world and the allurements of society and giving up the honors, profits, and preferments of professional life that he might uncover the mystery of the circulation of the blood; Pinel and Esquirol, sacrificing ease and professional gain that they might ameliorate the condition of the insane; Bichat and Schwann, giving their days and nights in quest of the infinitely little, that man might approach the nearer to the infinitely Great; John Hunter, ignoring wife and children, his food and drink, and the claims of the goddess Hygeia upon him for rest and sleep, that he might advance the knowledge of anatomy and the art of surgery; Pasteur, forgetting all else, even his sweetheart and his wedding-day, in his ardor to prove that life can only beget life, and to give to mankind a true theory of toxic infection, and to lay the foundation of a science of morbific causation; Reed, risking his life and comfort, turning away from the love of wife and children, the fascinations of affluence and of the éclat of a successful career of practice, that he might demonstrate to a skeptical world his belief in the non-contagiousness of yellow fever. These and an innumerable multitude have followed the examples of the masters in medicine in personal sacrifice to the cause of truth and duty from the beginning. Personal ease, health, comfort, or welfare has not entered into their calculation. Through their labors in medicine the plagues and epidemic diseases of the world have been well-nigh abolished from civilization; the infectious and contagious maladies largely shorn of their fatality; the virulence of all diseases modified; the horrors of war lessened. By the establishment of Boards of Health, Municipal, State, and National, initiated by the profession, to apply and enforce the discoveries in Preventive Medicine, the death-rate has been decreased and accordingly longevity increased. Through discoveries in the etiology of malignant maladies, and the application of the law of isopathy, of like curing like, immune medication is an accomplished fact. But far more important than any of the foregoing gratuitous services that the profession has rendered the world, are discoveries in antisepsis and anæsthesia, which have banished the perils and terrors of the lying-in room and led to the marvellous advancement in the resources of the surgery of to-day. The above are a few of the gratuitous contributions that the profession of medicine has made to the human race to mollify its sufferings and to prolong its existence upon the earth. But this is on the physical and least important side of the subject. The other side of it comprises its contributions to the moral, intellectual, and philosophical advancement of the race; to the development of a science of mind and morals, of brain physiology and pathology, unveiling the source of thought and feeling, of the emotional and religious sentiments, the rationale of sin and of evil, and laying the foundation of a rational moral philosophy. These are benefactions which transcend in importance all others that medicine has conferred upon humanity. The science of medicine is the most comprehensive of all the sciences because it comprehends them all, mathematics excepted. It has uncovered the fallacies of Ecclesiasticism and demonstrated the baselessness and futility of doctrinal Christianity. It has given us a foundation upon which to build a sound and enduring Theology, comprehending the relation of man to man and of God to all his creatures. It has unfolded the principles of a mental science; and is accordingly related to all the sciences of matter and of mind, the material and the spiritual, the physical and the psychical, the normal and the abnormal. This, then, is the incomparable legacy that the medical sciences have bequeathed to civilization. The philosophic follower and professor of medicine has discovered clues to the Infinite which escaped the Oracularists, or such as depend upon |