The Chinese, as early as 218 B.C., found their way amongst the Japanese doctors with medical books, dating back, it is alleged, to 2737 B.C., and the influence of Chinese medicine upon Japanese medicine has continued to be a controlling one up to the recent introduction of European medicines now in vogue. The old style of things is, according to Dr. Benjamin Howard, still followed by 30,000 out of the 41,000 physicians now practising throughout the Empire. Of the 30,000 of the old vernacular school, one of them is still on the list of the Court physicians, and maintains a high reputation. The impression throughout Europe that coloured papers, exorcisms, etc., are the basis of Chinese and Japanese medicine is erroneous. Dr. Howard has seen nearly 2,000 books by these people, covering most of the departments of medicine, but amongst which materia medica occupies the leading place. In these books are the doctrines of the successive schools, strikingly like some of those which in past centuries existed amongst our own ancestors. The successive medical colleges have always had a professor of astrology, but the solid fact remains that the materia medica has included amongst its several hundred remedies a large number of those used by ourselves, and these are not only vegetable, but animal and mineral, in the latter class mercury being prominent. Surgery became a separate branch as long since as the seventh or eighth century.[319]
CHAPTER VI.
THE MEDICINE OF THE PARSEES.
Zoroaster and the Zend-Avesta.—The Heavenly Gift of the Healing Plants.—Ormuzd and Ahriman.—Practice of the Healing Art and its Fees.
Zoroaster, or more correctly Zarathustra, was the founder, or at least the reformer of the Magian religion, and one of the greatest teachers of the East. The date of Zoroaster is involved in obscurity, but all classical antiquity agrees that he was an historical person. Neither do we know his birthplace. Duncker gives 1000 B.C. as his period; others consider that he was possibly a contemporary of Moses. In the Zend-Avesta and the records of the Parsees he is said to have lived in the reign of Vitaçpa or Gushtap, whom most writers recognise as Darius Hystaspis. Pliny notices works of Zoroaster treating of Nature and of precious stones. He is credited with the invention of magic; and as ancient medicine was closely connected with magic, we may, in this sense, consider him as a physician. Aristotle and Eudoxus stated that he lived six thousand years before Plato. It is hopeless, however, to attempt to settle a question so involved in obscurity. The most characteristic feature of Zoroaster’s teaching is the dualistic conception of the scheme of the universe, according to which two powers—a good and an evil—are for ever contending for the mastery—Ormuzd against Ahriman. Ormuzd is of the light, and from this emanate the good spirits whose laws are executed by Izeds, who are angels and archangels.
Ahriman is of the darkness, and from this emanate Daêvas, powers by whom mankind are led to their destruction—evil powers, false gods, devils. From these Daêvas proceed all the evil which is in the world; they are agents of that higher evil principle Druj, or falsehood and deception, which is called Ahriman, the spirit enemy. These Daêvas send to men, and are the causes of all diseases, which can only be cured by the good spirits. Man belongs either to Ormuzd or to Ahriman according to his deeds. If he offers sacrifice to Ormuzd and the gods, and helps them by good thoughts, good deeds, and spreads life over the world and opposes Ahriman by destroying evil, then he is a man of Asha, who drives away fiends and diseases by spells. He who does the contrary to this is a Dravant,—“demon,” a foe of Asha. The man of Ormuzd will have a seat near him in heaven.[320]
According to the Zend-Avesta Thrita was the first physician who drove back death and disease. Ormuzd (Ahura Mazda) brought him down from heaven ten thousand healing plants which had grown around the tree of eternal life, which is the white Haoma (the Indian Soma), or Gaokerena, which grows in the middle of the sea, Vouru-kasha. These are the Haomas, says Darmesteter.[321]
One is the yellow, or earthly Haoma, and is the king of healing-plants; the other, or white, is that which, on the day of resurrection, will make men immortal. Thrita was one of the first priests of Haoma, the life and health-giving plant, and thus he obtained his skill in medicine. Darmesteter says that Thrita was originally the same as Thraêtaona of the Rig-Veda.[322]
“We see that Thraêtaona fulfilled the same functions as Thrita. According to Hamza he was the inventor of medicine. The Tavids (formulas of exorcism) against sickness are inscribed with his name, and we find in the Avesta itself the Fravashi of Thraêtaona invoked ‘against itch, hot fever, humours, cold fever, vâvareshi; against the plagues created by the serpent.’ We learn from this passage that disease was understood as coming from the serpent; in other words, that it was considered a sort of poisoning, and this is the reason why the killer of the serpent was invoked to act against it. Thus Thrita Thraêtaona had a double right to the title of the first of the healers, both as a priest of Haoma and as the conqueror of the serpent.”
Ormuzd (Ahura Mazda) said that Thrita “asked for a source of remedies—he obtained it from Khshathia-Vaivya”—to withstand the diseases and infection which Angra-Mainyu had created by his witchcraft. As Ahriman had created ten thousand diseases, so Ormuzd gave mankind the same number of healing plants. This idea is firmly fixed in the minds of every one of us to this day: for every disease there must of necessity somewhere be a remedy, and that usually with the common people is supposed to be a plant. The Soma is the king of the healing plants in India and that also came down from heaven. “Whilst coming down from heaven the plants said, ‘He will never suffer any wound the mortal whom we touch.’”[323]