10 PRACTITIONERS BEFORE HIPPOCRATES. [CHAP. I. Meneläus, the brother of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, was wounded by an arrow from the bow of Alexander, in execution of a plot contrived by the gods who sided with the Trojans. Agamemnon is in a dreadful state of alarm and distress when he sees his brother carried off the field, and bitterly reproaches himself for having placed him in a post of so much danger, and then he turns to the divine herald, Talthybius, and thus addresses him : "Talthybius! with utmost speed The son of Esculapius, Chirurgeon unblemish'd !1 Straight must he visit Atreus' son, The warlike Menelaus, At whom some skilful archer-hand hath aim'd an arrow truly. Glory to him, but woe to us, Or Lycian or Troian." He spake; nor disobedient The herald heard his bidding, But sped to go along the host And soon espied the hero Standing and all around were pour'd the shielded stout battalions : Of men, who with him companied from courser-feeding Trikka. There near before his face he stood, And winged accents utter'd: "Rise! son of Esculapius! King Agamemnon calleth, Quick must thou visit Atreus' son, The warlike Menelaus, At whom some skilful archer-hand hath aim'd an arrow truly. Or Lycian, or Troian." He spake, and strongly did bestir the hero's heart within him. Achaia's ample army There is an ambiguity about the word here rendered "unblemished." Sometimes it means that there was no use made of impure magic, while at other times it is used in the sense of refined and accomplished. Perhaps in the modern language of chivalry it would have been rendered " sans reproche." Amid the crowd. But when they came where auburn Meneläus Was wounded, and in circle thick Around him all the noblest Were gather'd, and midst of them The godlike man was standing; First would Machaon pull the shaft From the well-fitting girdle, But that the pointed barbs were snapt and tangled as he drew it. The sash, and baldric underneath, Which smiths of copper labour'd. But when he saw the wound, wherein lighted the stinging arrow, So That Machaon, the son of Æsculapius, this knight "sans reproche" was also "sans peur" seems plain, from a passage in the eleventh book of the Iliad, in which this mighty man of war, as well as medicine, is represented as staying the advance of Hector himself, and rallying the Greeks in their extremity; and he requires to be disabled by an arrow from the bow of the skulking Alexander, who always plays the mean and shabby parts, shooting down heroes from behind rocks, and running away from a personal encounter. Alexander plants a triple-barbed arrow in Machaon's right shoulder, and effectually cripples the hero of Trikka. When the valorous Achaians saw their defender from Hector and their healer of wounds in this sorrowful plight, they were sore afraid lest the tide of battle should roll back, and their brave champion and shepherd of the people should be overtaken and slain so Idomeneus called out to godlike Nestor, who could be ill-spared at such a moment, "O Nestor, Neleus' progeny, great glory of the Achaians, Surely a sage chirurgeon, skilful to cut out arrows, And overspread assuagements soft, hath many fighters' value.” 1 Nestor did as he was requested, and bore away to the Greek camp the wounded Machaon. These are all the 1 Op. cit. Book IV. lines 194 to 219. glimpses we get of the rank and estimation of the art of medicine and its practitioners in the great panorama depicted by Homer, the only exponent we possess of the thoughts and feelings of the ancient Greeks. It is impossible not to be struck with the contrast that it presents to the status of the same class in later ages. The Niebelungen Lied may be called in a rough way the Homeric poem of Germany; it gives almost the only accredited traditions of the prehistoric Teutonic epoch, just as Homer does of a corresponding period of the Greek era. Now what a miserable position the medical men here occupy as compared to Machaon and his brother! Take for example the fourth adventure of the hero Siegfried, when he goes on a chivalrous errand to encounter the Saxon army which is advancing against his host, King Gunther, father of the incomparable beauty Kriemhilden, with whom he, like all the world, was in love. The brave Siegfried accomplished prodigies of valour, and of course overthrew the Saxons, killing hundreds with his own hand and taking many wounded prisoners. In Homer's time they gave no quarter; but we have now got into the Christian era. Had this adventure been conceived and narrated by a Greek of the Homeric age, he no doubt would have sent out with it some sturdy son of Esculapius to tend the wounded; but no such attendant accompanied Siegfried, so that his wounded had to be taken all the way back to King Gunther's land before their wounds were dressed, and then what an unheroic posture do the Physicians occupy! "Den wohlerfahrnen Aerzten bot Man reichen Geld, Wenn Sie die Helden heilten nach des Streites Noth." 1 "Rich remuneration was offered to the experienced physicians-unweighed silver and bright gold-if they cured the heroes after the battle's need." With what indignation and astonishment on the other hand would Aristotle, an accredited and theme-honoured 1 Das Niebelungen Lied, übersetst von Dr. Karl Simrock. Bonn, 1839, p. 43. 2 descendant of Esculapius,' and himself a physician, have heard the question proposed by a Frenchman of the seventeenth century of the Christian era, "Is the art of medicine. derogatory to nobility?" He certainly would not have set about proving that there was no degradation to nobles in the exercise of the divine art of healing by citing, like the learned interrogator, instances to show that there were many physicians ranked among the saints, that numerous popes, emperors, and kings practised medicine as well as not a few queens and other "Dames de qualité," and even several gods and goddesses.' Aristotle, had he thought the subject worthy of serious entertainment, would doubtless have raised some such preliminary questions as the following:-Is there any just conception of man's nobility that can in any degree, or at any point, clash with the proper exercise of an art which we honour the great gods themselves for having practised?-Is not the highest epithet of honour we can bestow upon a man "godlike," or "godborn?"-Do not the sons of the gods take the first rank among the heroes-the nobility of Greece? How then can dishonour come from sharing the attributes of the only recognized fountain of honour? Such an argument would probably have satisfied both the reason and the feelings of the Athenians at the time of Aristotle; but it ceased to be sufficient after the invasion of Christianity. The first great Christian orator overthrew it when, standing upon the very spot where Socrates had stood three hundred years before, he proclaimed to the inhabitants of Athens the God whom in ignorance they worshipped, and taught them that their false gods were demons. It could be no compliment to a man to be told 1 "Aristotle was the son of Nicomachus, a citizen of Stagira and Phæstias (Phæstiada); and Nicomachus was descended from Nicomachus, the son of Machaon, the son of Escu- he was descended in a direct line from a demon of dubious position in the land of spirits.1 The promulgation of the doctrines of Christianity converted the Greek mythology into a demonology. Hence the necessity of an entirely new source of nobility. The purely Christian view exalted every human being who accepted the Gospel of Christ into an heir of the kingdom of Heaven. According to it every believer held his patent of nobility direct from the Almighty. But the great doctrine of humility and the insignificance of material objects of ambition and desire, as compared to spiritual, was far too repugnant to men's pride and habits to obtain more than very partial, temporary, and theoretical acceptance. Beside it rose, or rather had already risen, in stupendous magnitude, its permanent antagonist the worship of strength and force, represented by the Roman empire. Between these two, Christianity cutting away the ground on which she had raised such exquisite fabrics of philosophy and poetry, and Rome reducing her sons to slavery, Greece lost her life. The life of Greece was distinguished from that of all other nations by having incorporated into it, as a part of its most intimate nature, the element of art. Other peoples, as the Romans, put on art as an adornment to their mature power; as a man in England, who has made his fortune by spinning cotton, orders a Correggio or a Turner, as well as a handsome carriage. But the Greeks were a nation of artists; by superiority in art, whether by the art of thinking as philosophers, or of speaking as orators, or by the art of medicine as physicians, or any other art, an Athenian became great in his social and political position. Such a condition of society never existed before, and the infinite distance at which we in England are at present removed "The things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to devils and not to God."-St. Paul's 1st Epistle to the Corinthians, chap. x., verse 20. |