But even within the Arian stock we do not observe an equal advance among all its branches. The peculiar medical cultures of the Egyptians, Jews, Babylonians, Assyrians, Phoenicians and Medo-Persians, with their respective states and the independent existence of their supporters, have utterly disappeared; the science of the Indians has remained stationary, and the medical culture of the Greeks, with its offshoots the medicine of the Romans and Arabians, existed and in part still exists only in very late, though certainly decided, after-effects. The offspring of the Romans, the Romanic peoples, however, are struggling to-day on even terms with the far younger, and therefore more vigorous Germans, for the olive-braneh of victory and the laurel of fame. The Sclaves too have recently entered independently into the struggle, and long hereafter, when the former nations have become old and feeble in the progress of the world, the Sclaves will probably dispossess both the Romanic nations and the Germans of their pre-eminence. The negroes have been from the outset, and now are, without any importance in the development of the medical sciences, as well as in every other way, and the Indians, devoted, alas, to destruction by that vampire of human races, the whites, though intellectually much more highly organized than their destroyers, have exercised no influence upon the progress of medical science. The same remark may also be made of the inhabitants of the Australian archipelago.

As regards the periods within which the different branches of the human race entered upon medical culture, on a general survey the writings still preserved to us furnish for very ancient times the most secure basis. In this way it may be regarded as settled for the Egyptians that some of their extant special medical works were composed in the 17th century B. C. On the other hand the Indians are able to exhibit such works only from the 11th century before our era. The medical knowledge of the Jews (Moses, about B. C. 1500), the ancient Persians (Zend Avesta about B. C. 500), and the Chinese, is scattered through, and incorporated in their religious and poetical writings of very early date, while of the equally ancient Phoenicians no written remains are preserved to us. The Greeks, whose spirit was destined to rule all later humanity, show some traces of medical knowledge in poems whose contents are assigned to the period about B. C. 1000, but they did not begin to create a medical literature proper until the fifth century before Christ. After the death of Alexander the Great (B. C. 323), the city of Alexandria became the chief nursery of medical science. From Alexandria and the schools founded by her pupils, the latter was transplanted among the Romans about B. C. 100. From Byzantium, by way of Alexandria, an offshoot of Greek medicine of historical importance was imported to the Persians and Arabians by the Nestorians, who were banished for heresy in the fifth century and founded or continued schools in Gondisapor and other places. Under the indirect influence of the latter, and chiefly by means of Jewish physicians, there arose in the 9th century the medical schools of lower Italy at Monte Casino

and Salerno, which in the darkest periods of the Middle Ages preserved for medicine a secure but narrow place of refuge, until through the Italians in the 14th century human anatomy was created to furnish a foundation for a new science of medicine. The new epoch was also specially inaugurated by the Greeks banished from Byzantium on the capture of this city by the Turks (1453). Henceforth, however, medicine entered upon a broader road and extended its influence over a larger number of people. Among the French, Paré, about the middle of the 16th century, created modern surgery in a method characteristic and valid even down to the present day, while the Englishman Harvey in the following century by his discovery of the circulation laid the foundation of physiology, and Paracelsus, earlier than either, created among the Germans a new science of medicine. Thus general medicine in these lands celebrated a new Spring time and a veritable Easter festival, while preserving the impulse for further development -- a development which in power and extent left far behind that of the earlier ages, and seems in our own age to be passing through its proper fructification. In the most recent times, however, the advancing wave of medical culture, chiefly by the aid of American and Australian representatives of the white race, has reached Japan, one of the oldest homes of medicine in eastern Asia, and thus the circuit of the world is being completed, centuries after its commencement.

The form of development of medicine in its entirety may, accordingly, be compared to a tree, whose perennial stem is formed by the Egyptians, Indians, Babylonians, Persians, Chinese, etc., and its tap-root, by which the stock is continued, is represented by the Greeks. From this stock, which first pushed forth the barren shoot of Roman medicine, and subsequently that of the Arabians during its miserable existence in the course of the Middle Ages, there finally developed a powerful branch at the beginning of the modern era, and after its transplantation into the soil of the West. Gradually there appeared five main branches, the Italian, the French, the German, and the English, with the less vigorous Spanish, which originally promised so much, but yet remained feeble and miserable. These first four main branches, with their dependent twigs, now tower above all small and modern civilized peoples and states. But in the formation of the complete crown, as in the system of universal medicine, all people will, at some time, take part.

THE DIVISION OF MEDICAL HISTORY INTO PERIODS

is commonly made in such a way that the era of Antiquity closes with Galen; then follow the Middle Ages of medicine, and the modern history of this science begins with Harvey.

If we look upon the history of medicine as a department entirely separable from the general history of civilization, it is justifiable to fix upon special epochs, and to regard particular services of representative persons within these epochs as special landmarks. The propriety of this