IV
THE PHARMACY OF HIPPOCRATES.

When we search into the history of medicine and the commencement of science, the first body of doctrine that we meet with is the collection of writings attributed to Hippocrates. Science ascends directly to that origin and there stops. Everything that had been learned before the physician of Cos has perished; and, curiously, there exists a great gap after him as well as before him.... So that the writings of Hippocrates remain isolated amongst the ruins of ancient medical literature.—Littré. Introduction to the Translation of the Works of Hippocrates.

About eight hundred years separated the periods of Æsculapius and Hippocrates. During that long time the study of medicine in all its branches was proceeding in intimate association with the various philosophies for which Greece has always been famous. Intercourse between Greece and Egypt, Persia, India, and other countries brought into use a number of medicines, and probably these were introduced and made popular by the shopkeepers and the travelling doctors, market quacks as we should call them.

Leclerc has collected a list of nearly four hundred simples which he finds alluded to as remedies in the writings of Hippocrates. But these include various milks, wines, fruits, vegetables, flits, and other substances which we should hardly call drugs now. Omitting these and certain other substances which cannot be identified I take from the author named the following list of medicines employed or mentioned in that far distant age;—

This list may be taken to have comprised pretty fairly the materia medica of the Greeks as it was known to them when Hippocrates practised, and as it is not claimed that he introduced any new medicines it may be assumed that these formed the basis of the remedies used in the temples of Æsculapius, though perhaps some of them were only popular medicines.

The temples of Æsculapius were in all those ages the repositories of such medical and pharmaceutical knowledge as was acquired. The priests of these temples were called Asclepiades, and they professed to be the descendants of the god. Probably the employment of internal medicines was a comparatively late development. Plato remarks on the necessarily limited medical knowledge of Æsculapius. Wounds, bites of serpents, and occasional epidemics, he observes, were the principal troubles which the earliest physicians had to treat. Catarrhs, gout, dysentery, and lung diseases only came with luxury. Plutarch and Pindar say much the same. The latter specially mentions that Æsculapius had recourse to prayers, hymns, and incantations in mystic words and in verses called epaioide, or carmina, from which came the idea and name of charm.

In later times these temples were beautiful places, generally situated in the most healthy localities, and amid lovely scenery. They were either in forests or surrounded by gardens. A stream of pure water ran through the grounds, and the neighbourhood of a medicinal spring was chosen if possible. The patients who resorted to them were required to purify themselves rigorously, to fast for some time before presenting themselves in the temple, to abstain from wine for a still longer preliminary period, and thus to appreciate the solemnity of the intercession which was to be made for them. On entering the temple they found much to impress them. They were shown the records of cures, especially of diseases similar to their own; their fasts had brought them into a mental condition ready to accept a miracle, the ceremonies which they witnessed were imposing, and at last they were left to sleep before the altar. That dreams should come under those circumstances was not wonderful; nor was it surprising that in the morning the priests should be prepared to interpret these dreams. Not unfrequently the patients saw some mysterious shapes in their dreams which suggested to the priests the medicines which ought to be administered. For no doubt they did administer medicines, though for many centuries they observed the strictest secrecy in reference to all their knowledge and practices.