After some preliminary observations on the ancient Temples of Health, which are mainly derived from Sprengel’s “History of Medicine”[457] he passes on to consider the opinion started[*? typo for stated, but started also in googlebooks] by this author and others before his time, that the first book of the “Prorrhetics” and the “Coacæ Prænotiones” are the results of isolated observations made upon the sick in the Asclepion of Cos. The probability of this opinion being well founded he shows to be very great; and he next endeavors to solve the question whether the first book of the “Prorrhetics” be derived from the “Coacæ Prænotiones,” or whether the latter be the more modern work of the two. He comes to the conclusion that the “Prorrhetics” is the more ancient work, for the following reasons: 1st. Because in it the names of the patients are frequently given, which is rarely the case in the “Coacæ Prænotiones.” 2d. Because queries and doubts are oftener found in this book than in the other, when one takes into account the number of presages. 3d. Because the number of observations which this book contains is much smaller than those which the “Coacæ” embrace. 4th. This is confirmed by the circumstance that the enunciations of the prognoses are far less extended in the “Prorrhetics,” whence it is clearly proved that they are not derived from so great a field of observations as those we meet with in the other work. He then gives a most lucid view of the parallelism which subsists between the “Prorrhetica” and the
“Coacæ,” and, as the results of his observations upon them, he draws the following most important conclusions:
1. “By a most fortunate occurrence certain monuments of the medical art, as cultivated by the Asclepiadæ, are preserved to us in the first “Prorrhetics” and the “Prænotiones Coacæ” which books appear to be fragments and excerpts from the histories of diseases and cures which were formerly found on the votive tablets of the Coan temple.
2. This sacerdotal medicine was at first a certain medical divination, which, as it was the offspring of pure observation, so the system of prognostics of the Coans was altogether aloof from the theories and systems of the philosophers, and is therefore to be reckoned most worthy of our attention, both from the great love of observation which we admire in it, and from the exquisite and beautiful sense of the simple truth which it evinces.
3. We must keep in view the origin of these presages from individual observations gradually collected, in order that we may have a knowledge of this system of prognostic semeiology. Hence we comprehend how we meet with so many doubtful propositions, and so many uncertain and vague remarks, and that imperfect etiology which confounded causes with their effects, and again, the latter with the former.
4. The readers must particularly keep before their eyes this origin, and the antiquity of those writings, if they would pass a correct judgment on the merits of the Asclepiadæ towards the art of medicine. Whatever in their works we have the pleasure of possessing, all attest the infancy of the art; many things are imperfect, and not unfrequently do we see them, while in the pursuit of truth, groping, as it were, and proceeding with uncertain steps, like men wandering about in darkness; but yet the method which they applied, and to which they would seem to have betaken themselves of their own accord, was so excellent, that nothing could surpass it. It was the same method which Hippocrates himself always adopted, and which, in fine, Lord Bacon, many ages afterwards, commended as the only instrument by which truth in medicine can be found out.
5. As this method is founded on true induction, so are its dicta to be held the more worthy of admiration, the more they possess a universal signification. To give an example; what assiduous observation, and what abundance of rational experience, must have been required for enunciating the following admirable truth, and, as it were, law of nature: “Those things which bring alleviation with bad signs, and do not remit with good, are troublesome and difficult.”
6. Many passages bear reference to the condition of the vital powers, which they took into account at all times, both in making presages and in exercising the art. For, although they had not our theories of the vital force, they perceived its effects very well by observation; and for this very reason, that they did not search for the art in theories, but in observation alone, we owe so many excellent things to them, since they did not adapt their observation to theories, but related a trustworthy and faithful history of the operations of nature.
7. They sought after many things from a comparison of health with disease, in which also they rightly calculated the manners and customs of men. Thus they call that, in the first place, the best mode of reclining, which is adopted by the patient when in good health, and hence they estimate the other modes as being less good, or altogether unfavorable. Nor did they only compare health with disease, but they compared also the symptoms of diseases with one another, and interpreted the one from the other. Thus they first depict and pronounce a favorable opinion on the best kind of excretions, and then they described the other abnormal kinds, and pass an unfavorable judgment on them.
8. They particularly relate the operations of a natura medicatrix, which, in a region such as Greece is, and in athletic, strong bodies, on which they appear to have practised the art, and for the most part in acute diseases, and the few chronic ones derived from them which they have left described, might especially be looked for. Hence that doctrine of crises most deserving of attention, the rudiments, indeed, of which we only have here preserved, but a just notion of which we may easily draw from these fragments.