From an ancient Dioscordian manuscript in the
Imperial Library of Vienna-Russell.

From the original picture, L'École de Médecine,
Paris.

HERMAN BOERHAAVE

From a painting by Mandelaar-Russell.

From a print engraved and colored by I. R. Smith in
possession of the late John Ring, Esq.

Gemahlt von Schoppe, 1831. By courtesy of Mlle.

Laflin, Paris.

The History of Medicine

THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE

PROLOGUE

PART I

THE PREDICATE OF MEDICINE

HE history of Medicine is not a biography of men who have distinguished themselves in the science and art of curing disease and the discovery of its natural history; nor is it an account of diseases and their remedies. It is rather a study of the progress of the science and art of caring for living beings in health and disease, and of ideas fundamental to them, and only incidentally of men who distinguished themselves in their advancement.

Medicine is founded upon the nature and constitution of man, physically and psychically, in all his phases of existence, and must necessarily be related to all the sciences, with scarcely an exception; since man is a microcosm of the universe, and science and philosophy are exponents of his relation thereto. This is the foundation of Aristotle's epigrammatic phrase: "The philosopher should