Iphiclus had no children, and he asked Melampus to tell him how he could become a father. He advised him to take the rust from a knife, and drink it in water during ten days. The remedy was eminently successful, and is the first instance in which a preparation of iron is known to have been prescribed in medicine. He cured the daughters of Prœtus by giving them hellebore (which has been called Melampodium by botanists), and he received the eldest of the princesses in marriage. He cured the women of Argos of a severe distemper which made them insane, and the king showed his gratitude by giving him part of his kingdom. He received divine honours after his death, and temples were raised to him.
The Medicine of Homer.
As Homer is supposed to have lived about 850 B.C., a study of such references as are to be found in the Iliad and Odyssey which relate to medicine and surgery will throw an important light on the state of the healing art as it was practised at that early period of Greek history.
There is little mention of disease in Homer. We read of sudden death, pestilence, and the troubles of old age, but there is hardly any fixed morbid condition noticed.
Although the poet exhibits considerable acquaintance with medical lore, and the human body in health and disease, he could have had little or no acquaintance with anatomy, because amongst Greeks, as amongst Jews, it was considered a profanation to dissect or mutilate the human corpse.
It was not till the rise of the Alexandrian school in the golden age of the Ptolemies that this sentiment was overcome. Still Homer must have known that it was the custom of the Egyptians to embalm their dead, as he refers to the process in the Iliad,[337] where Thetis poured into the nostrils of the corpse red nectar and ambrosia to preserve it from putrefaction. Ambrosia is referred to by Virgil as useful for healing wounds, and nectar was supposed to preserve flesh from decay. Homer’s heroes seem to have been singularly healthy folk; their only demand for the services of the army surgeons arose from the accidents of war. Machaon distinguished himself in surgery, and Podalirius is reputed to have been the first phlebotomist. Their services would be chiefly required for extracting arrow-heads and spear-heads, checking hæmorrhage by compression and styptic applications, and laying soothing ointments on wounded and bruised surfaces. Beyond these minor duties of the army surgeon, we find little record of their work. Mention is not made of amputations, of setting of fractures, or tying of arteries. Wounds were probed by Machaon, surgeon to Menelaus (Book IV.).
Whatever may have been the surgical skill of Machaon, we have proof that the art of dieting the wounded was not at all understood in the Homeric days. The wine and cheese was not the kind of refreshment which found favour in Plato’s time with the Greek physicians. Plato, in the Republic (Book III.), deals with the question at some length. He says that the draught of Pramnian wine with barley meal and cheese was an inflammatory mixture, and a strange potion for a man in the state of Eurypylus.
But he excuses the sons of Asclepius for their treatment, explaining that their method was not intended for coddling invalids, but for such as had not time to be ill, and that the healing art was revealed for the benefit of those whose constitutions were naturally sound, and that doctors used to expel their disorders by drugs and the use of the knife without interrupting their customary avocations, declining altogether to assist chronic invalids to protract a miserable existence by a studied regimen.
Le Clerc says[338] that Plato is wrong in this explanation of the Homeric treatment, and that the true one is that in those days the dietary of the sick was not understood. Modern medicine will decline to accept either theory. The fact is, Homer’s physicians were right. Good old wine was the best thing possible to restore a man fainting from the loss of blood; as for the cheese it was grated fine, and therefore was a peculiarly nutritious food in a fairly digestible condition. The barley water at all times was at least irreproachable. Although there is little evidence in the Homeric poems of any medical treatment which passes the limits of surgery, this is by no means conclusive against the possession of the higher art by Podalirius. In an epic poem, as Le Clerc points out, the subject is altogether too exalted to admit of medical discourses on the treatment of colic and diarrhœa.
Neither must we be surprised, that when the pestilence appeared in the camp of Agamemnon, Podalirius and Machaon did nothing to avert it. Such a disease was at that time considered beyond all human skill, and as the direct visitation of the gods. Homer clearly explains that the pestilence was due to their anger. Galen adduces evidence to prove that Æsculapius did really practise medicine, by music and by gymnastics, or exercises on foot and horseback.