The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800

by Albert H. Buck

Him who taught me this art I will esteem even as I do my parents; he shall partake of my livelihood, and, if in want, shall share my goods. I will regard his issue as my brothers and will teach them this art without fee or written engagement if they shall wish to learn it.

I will give instruction by precept, by discourse, and in all other ways, to my own sons, to those of him who taught me, to disciples bound by written engagements and sworn according to medical law, and to no other person.

So far as power and discernment shall be mine, I will carry out regimen for the benefit of the sick and will keep them from harm and wrong. To none will I give a deadly drug even if solicited, nor offer counsel to such an end; likewise to no woman will I give a destructive suppository; but guiltless and hallowed will I keep my life and mine art. I will cut no one whatever for the stone, but will give way to those who work at this practice.

Into whatsoever houses I shall enter I will go for the benefit of the sick, holding aloof from all voluntary wrong and corruption, including venereal acts upon the bodies of females and males whether free or slaves. Whatsoever in my practice or not in my practice I shall see or hear amid the lives of men which ought not to be noised abroad—as to this I will keep silence, holding such things unfitting to be spoken.

And now if I shall fulfil this oath and break it not, may the fruits of life and of art be mine, may I be honored of all men for all time; the opposite if I shall transgress and be forsworn.

(Translated from the Greek by the late John G. Curtis, M.D., of New York.)

While at first, according to Puschmann, many physicians did not belong to the Aesculapian Brotherhood, there came a time when all were known as Asclepiadae.

Influence of the Schools of Philosophy on the Growth of Medical Knowledge.—About the beginning of the sixth century B. C. there developed, in Greece and its colonies, schools of philosophy which exerted a most excellent influence upon the growth of medicine. The first of these was the one known as the Ionian School, whose founders and chief representatives were Thales, of Miletus in Ionia (born in 640, died in 548 B. C.), and his pupils Anaximander and Anaximenes. The guiding principle of these men was to study natural phenomena and to learn, if possible, their causes and the laws of their action. Physiology, therefore, became one of their special studies, and thus they contributed to the laying of one of the most important foundation-stones of medicine. Thanks to the good quality of the work of instruction that had thus far been carried on at Cos, Cnidus, and other Asclepieia, medicine had by this time reached a sufficient degree of development for its devotees to derive a full measure of benefit from the new teaching of the philosophers. Well grounded in the observation of disease in its different forms and modes of behavior, and also familiarized with the ordinary methods of treatment, these physicians needed to be shown a new route along which they might advance to greater heights of knowledge, and they also needed to be stimulated to further endeavor. The introduction of the new school accomplished both of these purposes. It taught the men of the older organizations that they must make much greater use of their reasoning powers than they had hitherto done, and at the same time, through the creation of a group of rival physicians, it supplied them with the required stimulus. Another important school of philosophy was that known as the Eleatic School, which flourished at Elea, in Lower Italy, its leaders being natives of that city. The most prominent men connected with this school were Parmenides (born about 540 B. C.) and Xenophanes of Colophon, in Asia Minor, whose contributions to mental science formed the basis of Plato’s metaphysics.

The period roughly embraced between the years 500 and 300 B. C. represents the most brilliant age of Greek intellectual and artistic activity. During this time there came into prominence such philosophers, historians, poets, physicians, artists and generals of armies as had never before been marshaled in historic array in so rapid succession. Even at this late day the names of these great men are almost household words—such names, for example, as Pythagoras, Alcmaeon, Anaxagoras, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, Aristophanes, Pindar, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Democedes, Hippocrates the Great, Phidias, Praxiteles, Zeuxis, Apelles, Darius I., Alexander the Great, and many others of almost equal celebrity. During the centuries immediately preceding this golden age of Greek history, there seem to have been very few men of great merit in any of the branches of learning or in the fields of war or art, but this impression is certainly false. It is doubtless to be explained by the fact that large quantities of documentary evidence relating to these years have been entirely lost. Daniel Le Clerc, for instance, states[21] that, of the separate histories of the descendants of Aesculapius which were written by Eratosthenes, Pherecydes, Apollodorus, Arius of Tarsus and Polyanthus of Cyrene, not one has come down to our time. If, then, in the single department of medicine, the destruction of documentary evidence was as great as is here represented, how enormous must have been the loss of precious historical materials in all the departments of human activity taken together. We may, therefore, safely assume that this golden age, which lasted only about two hundred years, represents simply the culmination of an even longer period of slow but steady development, a period of creditable though perhaps less brilliant achievements.

Of the names mentioned above there are several that belong to men who were in various ways connected with the early history of medicine. Pythagoras, for example, is said to have been one of the first among the Greek philosophers to exert a strong and double impression upon the medical teaching of that period. He was born in the Island of Samos, near the coast of Asia Minor, about the year 575 B. C. After spending several years in Egypt for purposes of study, and probably visiting Babylon, at that time a great centre of learning and of artistic cultivation, he established at Crotona, in the south of Italy, a school[22] where natural philosophy, mathematics, acoustics, etc., were taught. He also devoted some attention to anatomy, to embryology, to physiology and to therapeutics. According to his views of what constituted hygienic living a man should accustom himself to a diet of the simplest character, without meat. Pythagoras was a believer in the Chaldean doctrine that the uneven numbers possess a more important significance than the even, and that the number seven in particular has a special relationship to the phenomena of certain diseases; the crisis frequently falling on the seventh, fourteenth, or twenty-first day. Galen, it is said, expressed surprise that a man as sensible and learned as Pythagoras should have paid any attention to such trifles. Not a few of the disciples of Pythagoras were physicians, and when the brotherhood (if such it may be called) broke up, as it did in the fifth century B. C., these men traveled about from one Grecian city to another; from which fact they were given the name of “periodeuts” or ambulant physicians. Crotona was also celebrated as the birthplace of Milo, the athlete.