CHAPTER II

HIPPOCRATES THE FATHER OF MEDICINE THREE great extraneous influences contributed to the development of Greek medicine theology, philosophy, and athletics. And to the institutions through which these influences made themselves felt, namely, the temple, the school, and the gymnasium, Hippocrates sustained a well-defined relation.

Even in the early stage of Greek culture represented in the Iliad and the Odyssey the priesthood played a subordinate part in the healing art. These Homeric poems, to be sure, speak of disease as due to the anger of the gods, and tell of the efforts of the priests to arrest epidemics, as well as of the recital of appropriate incantations. But the physicians, cunning in the use of medicines, are evidently distinct from the priests, and form an adjunct of the warrior caste rather than of the sacerdotal.

In the Iliad, Æsculapius, or Asclepios, is a Thessalian chief, who has received from the Centaur Chiron instruction in the use of drugs; while his two sons are warriors and army surgeons. By the beginning of the eighth century B.C., tradition had endowed him with supernatural powers. He

became an earth god - especially accessible to his votaries in sleep and was portrayed with the snake and staff and other attributes of such a deity. Not long after, Esculapius was recognized as the god of medicine, the son of Apollo, and the father, not only of the surgeon Machaon and the physician Podalirius, but of a younger son, Telesphorus, the god of convalescence, as well as of Hygeia and Panacea. Eventually hundreds of temples arose throughout Hellas, on beautiful and salubrious sites overlooking the sea and beside healing fountains, dedicated to the worship of Asclepios. Among the most famous of these were the Asclepieia of Epidaurus, Cos, Cnidus, Crotona, and Pergamus.

In these healthful places, the strongholds of miraculous medicine, the priests of the temples were credited with cures comparable with the faith cures duly attested to-day at Lourdes, Sainte Anne de Beaupré, and other Christian shrines. In the history of the Greek temples there are some indications of the practice of fraud. The priests of Æsculapius stirred the imaginations and played upon the superstitions of the sufferers by sacrificial rites and purifications, by the presence of tame snakes, contact with which brought healing by the power of the indwelling god, and, in the third place, by temple sleep or incubation. The suppliant, lying down to sleep, after due preparation, by the altar of the god,

was at times granted a vision of Esculapius himself, and was forthwith healed. Sometimes the priest condescended to impersonate the god, offering equally efficacious treatment, or dictating remedies. Again, the suppliant might be permitted to dream by proxy. Those that were benefited by the suggestions, by the remedies, or by the restorative power of nature, left tablets telling of their cure, or other tokens, such as models of the healed parts in marble, or silver, or gold, the priests taking no pains to conceal from their patients the therapeutic virtue of a substantial fee.

Epidaurus, as befitted the reputed birthplace of Esculapius, was one of the loudest of the temples in proclaiming the benefits of divine healing, and upon the founding of a new temple this mother Asclepieion sent the gift of a snake, symbolic of the god of medicine. Two pillars inscribed with the record of faith cures have been recovered on the site of the ancient shrine. The following translations will indicate how the temple priests sought to overcome the skepticism of the Greek mind.

"A man with the fingers of his hand paralysed, save one. He came a suppliant to the god, and seeing the tablets in the temple he disbelieved the cures, and ridiculed the inscriptions, and sleeping he saw a vision. He seemed to be playing dice, and, as he was about to throw, the god appeared, seized

his hand, and stretched out the fingers, then he seemed to bend them up and stretch them out one by one, and when all were straight the god asked if he still disbelieved the inscriptions on the tablets, and he said no. Then he said: 'Fear not for thy former unbelief, but, that thou mayest believe in future, thou shalt obtain what a believer obtains'(?) [the sentence is much mutilated]. And when it was day he went away whole."

"Ambrosia of Athens, blind of one eye. She came a suppliant to the god, and going round the temple ridiculed some of the inscriptions, saying it was incredible and impossible that the lame and blind should be cured by seeing a dream-vision only. But having slept she saw a vision; the god seemed to stand by her and say that he would heal her, but would demand as payment a silver pig to be set up in the temple as a memorial of her stupidity. Having thus spoken he opened her diseased eye and poured medicine on it, and when it was day she departed cured."

The temple priests must not be confused with the Asclepiads (Asclepiada), often in attendance at the temples, who formed a guild or brotherhood made up, at first, of physicians claiming descent from Esculapius. At some of the temples the Asclepiads no doubt long continued to connive at the theurgy and charlatanry of the priests. In other places, however,

and notably at Cnidus and Cos, they dissociated themselves from the practice of mystic healing and taught to their sons and disciples medicine as based on rational principles.

Among the philosophers who brought the influence of the schools to bear on the development of early Greek medicine Pythagoras, Alcmæon, Empedocles, and Democritus are especially prominent. Born about 580 B.C. on the island of Samos, Pythagoras traveled extensively, visiting Egypt and probably Babylonia,, and settled at Crotona in South Italy. There he founded a sect or society which, to its interest in mathematics, ethics, and other branches of philosophy, added the teaching and practice of medicine and politics. He attended his followers when they were sick, and advocated adherence to a strict diet. In the Pythagorean school there developed a mystical number lore, the elements of which the master may have learned from the Egyptian priests or the Chaldean astrologers. It is difficult to comprehend the peculiar significance this philosophical school attached to certain numbers and number relations. For example, four was of interest to the Pythagorean mind as the square of the first even number, and still more so as symbolizing the perfection of eternally flowing nature. Ten was considered a perfect number. Something of the sentimental value asso