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condition till the dawn of the Grecian era. Le Clerk,1 indeed, carries us back as far as the time of Adam, the title of his fourth chapter being "Le premier Homme a été, en certain sens, le premier Médicin." * That Adam,

when ill or hurt, employed such appliances to relieve himself as his instinct or reason suggested, may be admitted; but in this he did not differ from a dog which, when sick, eats grass; and we might just as well claim the title of Doctor for "Cæsar" or "Dash," as for our great progenitor.

Even among the Egyptians, the most civilized nation of remote antiquity, the art of medicine seems to have been kept in a state of restraint so abject, as effectually to prevent its progress. Egypt, in its very youth, seems to have had all the rigidity of old age, and where everything was regulated by stringent and severe rules, medicine was not exempted from the stiffening process. "Doctors received their salaries from the treasury; but they were obliged to conform in the treatment of a patient to the rules laid down in their books, his death being a capital crime, if he was found to have been treated in any other way."2 So says Herodotus. How this system worked is best illustrated by a fact related by the same unexceptionable authority. The following occurrence took place after medicine had existed as a state-art for at least five hundred years. "It happened that King Darius, as he leaped from his horse, sprained his foot. The sprain was one of no common severity, for the ancle-bone was forced out of the socket." In fact, it was a dislocation. "Now Darius had already at his court certain Egyptians, whom he reckoned the best skilled physicians in all the world; to their aid,

1 Histoire de la Medicine, par Daniel Le Clerk, Amsterdam, 1723. This is considered by the most competent authorities a very learned and trustworthy history of the period to which it refers.

2 The History of Herodotus. A new

English version, edited, with copious
Notes, &c., by George Rawlinson,
M.A., assisted by Colonel Sir Henry
Rawlinson, and Sir J. G. Wilkinson,
F.R.S. London 1858. Vol. II.
Note to page 136, by Sir G. Wil-
kinson.

therefore, he had recourse; but they twisted the foot so clumsily and used such violence, that they only made the mischief greater. For seven days and seven nights the King lay without sleep, so grievous was the pain he suffered. On the eighth day of his indisposition, one who had heard, before leaving Sardis, of the skill of Democêdes, the Crotonian, told Darius, who commanded that he should be brought with all speed into his presence. When, therefore, they had found him among the slaves of Crates, quite uncared for by any one, they brought him just as he was, clanking his fetters, and all clothed in rags, before the King. As soon as he was entered into the presence, Darius asked him if he knew medicine, to which he answered 'No,' for he feared that if he made himself known he would lose all chance of again beholding Greece. Darius, however, perceiving that he dealt deceitfully, and really understood the art, bade those who had brought him to the presence-go fetch the scourges and pricking irons (or blinding irons to put out his eyes). Upon this Democêdes made confessions, but at the same time said he had no thorough knowledge of medicine-he had but lived some time with a physician, and in this way had gained a slight smattering of the art. However, Darius put himself under his care, and Democêdes, by using the remedies customary among the Greeks, and exchanging the violent treatment of the Egyptians for milder means, first enabled him to get some sleep, and then in a very little time restored him altogether, after he had quite lost the hope of ever having the use of his foot." What a picture of the triumph of Greek intellect, in the person of a ragged slave, over Egyptian stolidity, patronised by the greatest monarch of his age, surrounded by all the pomp and terror of absolute power!

Without further comment we leave the pre-historic fossil

1 Op. cit. Vol. II. pp. 515, 516.

age, separated as it is by a vast chasm from the living present; for the old notion that the Greeks derived their legendary lore from Egypt-and it is with Greek legends we must begin our inquiry-is now well-nigh exploded; indeed, it is no less revolting to reason to ascribe to Egyptian thought the parentage of Grecian science, than it is to taste to imagine such a figure as the bright, airy, and curvilinear Apollo to have been born and bred in the land of pyramids and mummies. As Egypt was the land of rigidity and death, so Greece was the land of liberty and life. The living force there embodied itself in heroic songs and deeds during remotest ages, and afterwards took the form of philosophy and political organization; and when its original native development had been broken up by internal divisions and the rude strength of Rome, it still continued to act upon the course of the world's history, modifying all its important changes, even Christianity itself, and powerfully affecting the thought, feeling, and action, of all European civilized communities down to the present hour. Indeed, the characteristic peculiarity of this force is its continuity; and to comprehend its operation upon any part of medicine we must trace it from its source. That source is in the high table-land of legend, a land enveloped in impenetrable mist, a land of unrealities, but of infinite significance, because of real belief to the Greeks. This is the conclusion at which modern history has at length arrived; that what is of importance to determine is, not whether the beautiful tales of enterprise and adventure. which constitute the mythology of Greece have any basis of actual events-an inquiry impossible to prosecute with any success-but which of these stories the Greeks believed, and how their faith in their legends affected their character and history. The function of science in this matter is to estimate and analyze the belief itself, not the thing believed in. The absurdity of attempting the

1

latter is well illustrated by the following example taken from the province of medicine :-"Some," Some," says Pliny, suppose that Achilles cured Telephus by the plant called Achilea, others think that it was by verdigris, which is much employed in plaisters; and for this reason they add that Achilles is painted scraping the verdigris off the point of the spear into the wound of Telephus." Of the fact of the cure of Telephus by Achilles, Pliny expresses no doubt. Now who was Telephus? He was the grandson of Apheidas, king of Tegea, who was the son of Arkas, of that ilk,—that is, of Arcadia. And who was Arkas? "The beautiful Callisto, companion of Artemis (Diana) in the chase, had bound herself by a vow of chastity; Zeus (Jupiter), either by persuasion or by force, obtained a violation of the vow, to the grievous displeasure both of Héré (Juno) and Artemis. The former changed Callisto into a bear, the latter, when she was in that shape, killed her with an arrow. Zeus gave to the unfortunate Callisto a place among the stars, as the constellation of the bear: he also preserved the child Arkas, and gave it to the Atlantid nymph Mena to bring up." What should we think of an astronomer incorporating this story in a treatise upon the constellations, as if it were an observation of an eclipse? Yet this tale of Arkas rests upon the same evidence as the cure of his great-grandson by Achilles.

" 2

Such attempts at interpretation of alleged facts in a purely fictitious story, are worse than a waste of time and labour, for they give an air of reality to what is in itself nothing. As well might a botanist, writing two thousand years hence upon the leguminous plants, attempt to account scientifically for there once having existed a bean of enormous size, and give a learned refutation of all possible objections to its prodigious growth, and to its having been

1 Pliny, Book XXV. Chap. 5.

2 Grote's History of Greece, Vol. I. pp. 241, 242.

ascended by a man of diminutive stature, in order to explain the story of "Jack and the Bean-stalk." Such a writer would not be guilty of a greater perversity of intellect than are those who attempt to gather science out of the Iliad. But while, on the one hand, we should commit a grave error if we strove to extract solid facts out of empty fables, we should, on the other, be much more in the wrong if we disregarded the legendary lore altogether. There may be no grounds for believing that such a person as Hercules ever existed, but the belief of the Spartans that they were lineal descendants of this demigod, exerted a powerful influence upon the events of Greece and the history of the world. It was in a great measure in virtue of this divine descent that Sparta claimed the leadership of the Greek confederation against Xerxes, and it was out of this admitted claim, that the most important post in battle was yielded to the Spartans. Had the other tribes refused to award what was then considered a legitimate distinction, it is by no means improbable that in consequence of the affront, the Lacedæmonian contingent would have withdrawn from the combat, as, at the battle of Culloden, the Macdonalds' threatened to march off without fighting for a similar reason; and had this occurred then, most likely Greece would have succumbed to the Persian monarch, and nascent Europe become a satrapy of the great oriental despot's dominions.

"The descent of the Spartan king, Leonidas," says Mr. Grote, "from Hercules, rests upon no better evidence than

1 "As if a fate had hung over the councils of Charles, the dispositions of this order of battle involved the decision of a point of honour, esteemed of the utmost importance in this singular army, though in any other a mere question of idle precedence. The Macdonalds, as the most powerful and numerous of the clans, had claimed from the beginning of the expedition

the privilege of holding the right of
the whole army. Lochiel and Appin
had waived any dispute of this claim at
the battle of Preston; the Macdonalds
had also led the right at Falkirk, and
now the left was assigned to this proud
surname, which they regarded not only
as an affront but as an evil omen."-Sir
W. Scott's Tales of a Grandfather, 3rd
Series, Vol. III. p. 230.

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