He considered that men, animals, and plants are demons punished by banishment, but who, becoming purified, may regain the home of the gods. It is hardly necessary to say that he held the demoniacal possession theory of disease, and treated all complaints by means appropriate to the theory. Anticipating the modern opinions of the bacteriologists, he banished epidemics by building great fires and draining the water from marshy lands. He understood something of the causes of infectious diseases, and in their treatment usurped the province of the gods who had sent them.[354] He believed the embryo was nourished through the navel. We owe to him the terms amnion and chorion (i.e., the innermost and outer membranes with which the fœtus is surrounded in the womb). He believed that death was caused by extinction of heat, that expiration arose from the upward motion of the blood, and inspiration from the reverse. He is said to have raised a dead woman to life.[355]
Empedocles believed in the doctrine of re-incarnation. “I well remember,” he says, “the time before I was Empedocles, that I once was a boy, then a girl, a plant, a glittering fish, a bird that cut the air.” To his disciples he said: “By my instructions you shall learn medicines that are powerful to cure disease, and re-animate old age—you shall recall the strength of the dead man, when he has already become the victim of Pluto.”[356] Further speaking of himself, he says: “I am revered by both men and women, who follow me by ten thousands, inquiring the road to boundless wealth, seeking the gift of prophecy, and who would learn the marvellous skill to cure all kinds of diseases.”[357]
The School of the Pythagoreans at Crotona.
Although in ancient Greece the art of medicine, as we have already shown, was closely connected with the temples, if not actually with religion, its entanglement with philosophy was a scarcely less unfortunate connection, and it was not able to make any real progress till Hippocrates liberated it from both priests and philosophers. 582 years before Christ Pythagoras was born, the ideal hero or saint whom we faintly discern through the mythical haze which has always enveloped him. Philosopher, prophet, wonder-worker, and physician, he gathered into his mind as into a focus the wisdom of the Brahmans, the Persian Magi, the Egyptians, the Phœnicians, the Chaldæans, the Jews, the Arabians, and the Druids of Gaul, amongst whom he had travelled, if we may believe what is reported of him. He may have visited Egypt,[358] at any rate, besides acquainting himself with the countries of the Mediterranean. His authentic history begins with his emigration to Crotona, in South Italy, about the year 529. There he founded a kind of religious brotherhood or ethical-reform society, and “appeared as the revealer of a mode of life calculated to raise his disciples above the level of mankind, and to recommend them to the favour of the gods.”[359] Grote believes that the removal to Crotona was prompted by the desire to study medicine in its famous school, probably combined with the notion of instructing the pupils in his philosophy. He rendered great services to the healing art by insisting on the necessity of a thorough comprehension of the organs, structure, and functions of the body in their normal, healthy condition; this must be conceded, though his visionary philosophy did much to destroy the scientific value of his medical teaching.
The founder of the healing art amongst the Greeks and Hellenic peoples generally was Pythagoras. He was imbued with Eastern mysticism, teaching that the air is full of spiritual beings, who send dreams to men and cause to men and cattle disease and health. He taught that these spirits must be conciliated by lustrations and invocations. Pliny says[360] that he taught that holding dill (anethum) in the hand is good against epilepsy. The health of the body is to be maintained by diet and gymnastics. It is interesting to find that this great philosopher recommended music to restore the harmony of the spirits. Besides the magic virtues of the dill, he held that many other plants possessed them, such as the cabbage (a food in great favour with the Pythagoreans), the squill, and anise. He held that surgery was not to be practised, as it is unlawful, but salves and poultices were to be permitted. His disciples attributed the union between medicine and philosophy to him.
The Pythagorean philosophy turns upon the idea of numbers and the mathematical relations of things. “All things are number;” “number is the essence of everything.” The world subsists by the principle of ordered numbers. The spheres revolve harmoniously; the seven planets are the seven golden chords of the heavenly heptachord. As a corollary to this notion we have the theory of opposites. We have the odd and even, and their combinations. The even is the unlimited, the odd the limited; so all things are derived from the combination of the limited and the unlimited. Then we get the limited and the unlimited, the odd and the even, the one and many, right and left, masculine and feminine, rest and motion, straight and crooked, light and darkness, good and evil, square and oblong. When opposites unite, there is harmony. The number ten comprehends all other numbers in itself; four was held in great respect, because it is the first square number and the potential decade (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10). Pythagoras was the discoverer of the holy τετρακτύς, “the fountain and root of ever-living nature.” Five signifies marriage, one is reason because unchangeable, two is opinion, seven is called παρθένος and Ἀθήνη, because within the decade it has neither factors nor product.[361]
The doctrine of transmigration of souls, metempsychosis, is Pythagoras’s. He probably borrowed it from the Orphic mysteries; originally no doubt it came from Asia. Asceticism, mysticism, and Neoplatonism sprang from this noble and lofty philosophy. Closely connected with his theory of numbers he held that from these points are produced, from these lines, from lines figures, and from figures solid bodies. The elements fire, water, earth, and air, account in his conception for the formation of the world. He understood the structure of the body, its procreation and development. He believed that the animal soul is an emanation from the world-soul; the universal soul is God, author of himself. Demons are an order of beings between the highest and the lowest. Striving for the good brings moral health. Bodily health means harmony, disease means discord. Diseases are caused by demons, and are to be dispelled by prayers, offerings, and music. He first among the Greeks taught the immortality of the soul; he held a doctrine of rewards and punishments, and taught that of metempsychosis. For many succeeding ages the Pythagorean doctrine had the greatest influence on the art of medicine.[362]
Le Clerc says that Pythagoras obtained his ideas of the climacteric years from the Chaldæans. The term is applied to the seventh year of the life of man, and it was anciently believed that at each change we incur some risk to life or health, on account of the bodily changes undergone at that time.[363] Celsus says that the medical sentiment with respect to the septenary number in diseases, and that of the odd and even days, is of Pythagorean origin.[364] The Pythagoreans had a great respect for the number four. The quaternary number was sacred to the Egyptians; they burned in the temples of Isis a kind of resinous gum, myrrh, and other drugs, in the preparation of which they had regard to the number four. The Israelites imitated them in this respect (Exod. xxx. 2).[365]
The sacred bean of Pythagoras was the object of religious veneration in Egypt; the priests were commanded not to look upon it. It is thought to have been the East Indian Nelumbium.[366]
Zamolxis, who was a god to the Getans, is supposed by some to have been a slave and disciple of Pythagoras; by others he is considered an altogether mythical personage. He is credited by those who believe him to have been a physician with having said that “A man could not cure the eyes without curing the head, nor the head without all the rest of the body, nor the body without the soul.” Plato said much the same thing when he remarked, “To cure a headache you must treat the whole man.” Zamolxis cured the soul, not by the enchantments of magic, but by wise discourse and reasonable conversation. “These discourses,” said Plato, “produce wisdom in the soul, which having once been acquired it is easy after that to procure health both for the head and all the rest of the body.”