BOOK III.
GREEK MEDICINE.
CHAPTER I.
THE MEDICINE OF THE GREEKS BEFORE THE TIME OF HIPPOCRATES.
Apollo, the God of Medicine.—Cheiron.—Æsculapius.—Artemis.—Dionysus.—Ammon.—Hermes.—Prometheus.—Melampus.—Medicine of Homer.—- Temples of Æsculapius.—The Early Ionic Philosophers.—Empedocles.—School of Crotona.—The Pythagoreans.—Grecian Theory of Diseases.—School of Cos.—The Asclepiads.—The Aliptæ.
Gods of Medicine.
The origin of Greek medicine is intermixed with the Hellenic mythology. We must begin, not with Æsculapius (Asclepios), but with the sun itself. Apollo (Pæan), as the god who visits men with plagues and epidemics, was also the god who wards off evil and affords help to men. He was constantly referred to as “the Healer,” as Alexicacus, the averter of ills. He is the saviour from epidemics, and the pæan was sung in his honour (Iliad, I. 473, XXII. 391).
Apollo promoted the health and well-being of man, and was the god of prolific power, the trainer of youth, and thus he was the chief deity of healing. As the god of light and purity he was truly the health-god; and as light penetrates the darkness, he was the god of divination and the patron of prophecy, acting chiefly through women when in a state of ecstasy. Homer says that Pæan[329] was the physician of the Olympian gods (Iliad, V. 401, 899).
Next we find Cheiron, the wise and just centaur (Iliad, XI. 831), who had been instructed by Apollo and Artemis, and was famous for his skill in medicine. He was the master and instructor of the most celebrated heroes of Greek story, and he taught the art of healing to Æsculapius (B.C. 1250). This god of medicine was said to be the son of Apollo. Pausanius[330] explains the allegory thus: “If Asclepius is the air—indispensable to the health of man and beast, yet Apollo is the sun, and rightly is he called the father of Asclepius, for the sun, by his yearly course, makes the air wholesome.”
In the Homeric poems Æsculapius is not a divinity, but merely a human being. Homer, however, calls all those who practise the art of healing descendants of Pæan; his healing god is Apollo, and never Æsculapius.
Legend tells that Æsculapius was the son of Apollo by Coronis, who was killed by Artemis for unfaithfulness, and her body was about to be burnt on the pyre, when Apollo snatched the boy out of the flames and handed him over to the centaur Cheiron, who taught him how to cure all diseases. Pindar tells the story of his instruction in the art of medicine:—