The Chaldeans and Babylonians, we are told by Herodotus, carried their sick to the public roads and markets, that travellers might converse with them, and communicate any remedies which had been successfully used in similar cases; this custom continued during many ages in Assyria; and Strabo states that it prevailed also amongst the ancient Lusitanians, or Portuguese: in this manner, however, the results of experience descended only by oral tradition; it was in the temple of Esculapius in Greece that medical information was first recorded; diseases and cures were there registered on durable tablets of marble; the priests[[13]] and priestesses, who were the guardians of the temple, prepared the remedies and directed their application, and thus commenced the profession of Physic. With respect to the actual nature of these remedies, it is useless to inquire; the lapse of ages, loss of records, change of language, and ambiguity of description, have rendered every learned research unsatisfactory; indeed we are in doubt with regard to many of the medicines which even Hippocrates employed. It is however clearly shewn by the earliest records, that the ancients were in the possession of many powerful remedies; thus Melampus of Argos, the most ancient Greek physician with whom we are acquainted, is said to have cured one of the Argonauts of sterility, by administering the rust of iron in wine for ten days; and the same physician used hellebore as a purge, on the daughters of king Prætus, who were afflicted with melancholy. Venesection was also a remedy of very early origin; for Podalirius, on his return from the Trojan war, cured the daughter of Damethus, who had fallen from a height, by bleeding her in both arms. Opium, or a preparation of the poppy, was certainly known in the earliest ages; it was probably opium that Helen mixed with wine, and gave to the guests of Menelaus, under the expressive name of nepenthe,[[14]] to drive away their cares, and increase their hilarity; and this conjecture receives much support from the fact, that the nepenthe of Homer was obtained from the Egyptian Thebes;[[15]] and if we may credit the opinion of Dr. Darwin, the Cumæan Sibyll never sat on the portending tripod without first swallowing a few drops of the juice of the Cherry-laurel.[[16]]
“At Phœbi nondum patiens, immanis in antro
Bacchatur Vates, magnum si pectore possit
Excussisse deum: tanto magis ille fatigat
Os rabidum, fera corda domans, fingitque premendo.”
Æneid, l. vi. 78.
There is reason to believe that the Pagan priesthood were under the influence of some powerful narcotic during the display of their oracular powers, but the effects produced would seem to resemble rather those of Opium, or perhaps of Stramonium, than of the Prussic acid. Monardes tells us that the priests of the American Indians, whenever they were consulted by the chief gentlemen, or casiques as they are called, took certain leaves of the Tobacco, and cast them into the fire, and then received the smoke, which they thus produced, in their mouths, in consequence of which they fell down upon the ground; and that after having remained for some time in a stupor, they recovered, and delivered the answers which they pretended to have received, during their supposed intercourse with the world of spirits.
The sedative powers of the Lactuca Sativa, or Lettuce,[[17]] were known also in the earliest times; among the fables of antiquity, we read that after the death of Adonis, Venus threw herself on a bed of lettuces, to lull her grief, and repress her desires. The sea onion or Squill, was administered in cases of dropsy by the Egyptians, under the mystic title of the Eye of Typhon. The practices of incision and scarification were employed in the camp of the Greeks before Troy, and the application of spirit to wounds was also understood, for we find the experienced Nestor applying a cataplasm, composed of cheese, onion, and meal, mixed up with the wine of Pramnos, to the wounds of Machaon.[[18]]
The revolutions and vicissitudes which remedies have undergone, in medical as well as popular opinion, from the ignorance of some ages, the learning of others, the superstitions of the weak, and the designs of the crafty, afford ample subject for philosophical reflection; some of these revolutions I shall proceed to investigate, classing them under the prominent causes which have produced them, viz. Superstition—Credulity—Scepticism—False Theory—Devotion to Authority, and Established Routine—The assigning to Art that which was the effect of unassisted Nature—The assigning to peculiar substances Properties, deduced from Experiments made on inferior Animals—Ambiguity of Nomenclature—The progress of Botanical Science—The application, and misapplication of Chemical Philosophy—The Influence of Climate and Season on Diseases, as well as on the properties, and operations of their Remedies—The ignorant Preparation, or fraudulent Adulteration of Medicines—The unseasonable collection of those remedies which are of vegetable origin,—and, the obscurity which has attended the operation of compound medicines.