The arteries were so called by the ancients because they thought they contained air, as they were always found empty after death. Hippocrates and his contemporaries called the trachea an artery. Some of the ancient anatomists, however, knew that they contain blood, and they knew that when an artery is divided it is more dangerous and entails a longer recovery than the division of a vein. They knew also of the pulsation in the arteries which does not exist in the veins, and they were fully aware of the importance of this fact in its relation to diagnosis and treatment.
“The ancients chiefly regarded the odd days, and called them critical (κρισίμοι), as if on these a judgment was to be formed concerning the patient. These days were the third, fifth, seventh, ninth, eleventh, fourteenth, and twenty-first; so that the greatest influence was attributed to the seventh, next to the fourteenth, and then to the twenty-first. And therefore, with regard to the nourishment of the sick, they waited for the fits of the odd days; then afterwards they gave food, expecting the approaching fits to be easier; insomuch that Hippocrates, if the fever had ceased on any other day, used to be apprehensive of a relapse.”[426]
These critical days were believed by Hippocrates and most of the other ancient physicians to be influenced by the moon.
Greek medicine was divided into five parts, and to this day these divisions are still maintained. They were (1) Physiology and Anatomy considered together; (2) Ætiology, or the doctrine of the causes of disease; (3) Pathology; (4) Hygiene, or the art of preserving the health; (5) Semeiology, or the knowledge of the symptoms of disease and diagnosis, and Therapeutics, or the art of curing diseases.
As to the contending claims of the various Greek schools of medicine, Dr. Adams says,—
“There is no legitimate mode of cultivating medical knowledge which was not followed by some one or other of the three great sects into which the profession was divided in ancient times.”[427]
With respect to the professional income of Greek physicians, Herodotus states[428] that the Æginetans, about 532 B.C., paid Democedes one talent a year from the public treasury for his services, i.e. about £344. From the Athenians he afterwards received a sum amounting to about £406 per annum. When he removed to Samos, Polycrates paid him a salary of two talents, or £487 10s. A difficulty arises, however, as to this statement of Herodotus, and there may have been an error in the sums mentioned.[429]
The procuring of abortion was not in ancient Greece always considered a very great crime, and amongst the Romans it seems to have been unnoticed originally. It is related by Cicero that he knew of a case in Asia where a woman was put to death for having procured the abortion of her own child. Under the emperors, the punishment was exile or condemnation to the mines.
The Scythians.
Of medicine as practised amongst the Scythians, little is known.