The Egyptian physicians, each being confined to the study and treatment of one part of the body, or one disease, were bound to proceed in all cases according to the prescribed rules of their art. If the patient died under this treatment, no blame attached to the physician; but woe to the rash practitioner who ventured to save a life by any means out of the regular routine; the success of the experiment was not admitted as an excuse for the transgression and he was punished with death; for the law presumed that in every case the treatment enjoined was such as by common consent of the most learned professors had been approved because by long experience it had been found beneficial. The laws had some right to interfere because physicians received a public stipend.
Something like this prevails at this day in China. It is enacted in the Ta Tsing Leu Lee, that “when unskilful practitioners of medicine or surgery, administer drugs, or perform operations with the puncturing needle, contrary to the established rules and practice, and thereby kill the patient, the Magistrates shall call in other practitioners to examine the nature of the medicine, or of the wound, as the case may be, which proved mortal; and if it shall appear upon the whole to have been simply an error without any design to injure the patient, the practitioner shall be allowed to redeem himself from the punishment of homicide, as in cases purely accidental, but shall be obliged to quit his profession for ever. If it shall appear that a medical practitioner intentionally deviates from the established rules and practice, and while pretending to remove the disease of his patient, aggravates the complaint, in order to extort more money for its cure, the money so extorted shall be considered to have been stolen, and punishment inflicted accordingly, in proportion to the amount. If the patient dies, the medical practitioner who is convicted of designedly employing improper medicines, or otherwise contriving to injure his patient, shall suffer death by being beheaded after the usual period of confinement.”
No man ever entertained a higher opinion of medical science, and the dignity of a Physician than Van Helmont. What has been said of the Poet, ought in his opinion to be said of the Physician also, nascitur, non fit, and in his relation to the Creator, he was more Poet, or Prophet, whom the word VATES brings under one predicament,—more than Priest. Scilicet Pater Misericordiarum, qui Medicum ab initio, ceu Mediatorem inter Deum et hominem, constituit, immo sibi in deliciis posuit, à Medico vinci velle, nimirum, ad hoc se creasse peculiari elogio, et elegisse testatur. Ita est sane. Non enim citius hominem punit Deus, infirmat, aut interimere minatur, sibi quam optet opponentem Medicum, ut se Omnipotentem, etiam meritas immittendo pœnas, vincat propriis clementiæ suæ donis. Ejusmodi autem Medici sunt in ventre matris præparati,—suo fungentes munere, nullius lucri intuitu, nudèque reflectuntur super beneplacitum (immo mandatum) illius, qui solus, verè misericors, nos jubet, sub indictione pœnæ infernalis, fore Patri suo similes.—Obedite præpositis præceptum quidem: sed honora parentes, honora Medicum, angustius est quam obedire, cum cogamur etiam obedire minoribus. Medicus enim Mediator inter Vitæ Principem et Mortem.
“To wit,”—this done into English by J. C. sometime of M. H. Oxon.—“the Father of mercies, he who appointed a Physician, or Mediator between God and man from the beginning, yea He made it his delight that he would be overcome by a Physician, indeed he testifieth that he created and chose him to this end—for a peculiar testimony of his praise. It is so in truth. For no sooner doth He punish, weaken, and threaten to kill man, but he desireth a Physician opposing himself, that He may conquer himself, being Omnipotent, and even in sending deserved punishments, by the proper gifts of his clemency.—Of this sort are Physicians, which are fitted from their Mothers wombs, exercise their gift with respect to no gain; and they are nakedly cast upon the good pleasure,—yea the command—of him, who alone being truly merciful commands us that, under pain of infernal punishment, we be like to his father.—Obey those that sit over you, is a precept indeed; but honour thy Parents, honour the Physician, is more strict than to obey, seeing we are constrained even to obey our youngers. For the Physician is a Mediator between the Prince of life and Death.”
Some of the Floridian tribes had a high opinion of medical virtue. They buried all their dead, except the Doctors; them they burnt, reduced their bones to powder and drank it in water.
A century ago the Lions in the Tower were named after the different Sovereigns then reigning, “and it has been observed that when a King dies, the Lion of that name dies also.”
In the great Place at Delhi the poor Astrologers sit, as well Mahometan as Heathen. These Doctors, forsooth, sit there in the sun upon a piece of tapistry, all covered with dust, having about them some old mathematical instruments, which they make shew of to draw passengers, and a great open book representing the animals of the Zodiack. These men are the oracles of the vulgar, to whom they pretend to give for one Payssa, that is a penny, good luck, and they are they that looking upon the hands and face, turning over their books and making a shew of calculation, determine the fortunate moment when a business is to be begun, to make it successful. The mean women, wrapt up in a white sheet from head to foot, come to find them out, telling them in their ear their most secret concerns, as if they were their confessors, and intreat them to render the stars propitious to them, and suitable to their designs, as if they could absolutely dispose of their influences.
The most ridiculous of all these astrologers in my opinion was a mongrel Portugueze from Goa, who sat with much gravity upon his piece of tapistry, like the rest, and had a great deal of custom, though he could neither read nor write; and as for instruments and books was furnished with nothing but an old sea-compass, and an old Romish prayer-book in the Portugueze language, of which he shewed the pictures for figures of the Zodiac. “As taes bestias tal Astrologo—for such beasts, such an Astrologer,” said he to father Buze a Jesuit, who met him there.
M. Rondeau in 1780, opened a large tumour which had grown behind a woman's left ear, at Brussels, and found in it a stone, in form and size like a pigeon's egg, which all the experiments to which it was subject proved to be a real Bezoar, of the same colour, structure, taste and substance with the oriental and occidental Bezoars. This, however was a fact which the Doctor could not exactly accommodate to his theory, though it clearly belonged to it; the difficulty was not in this, that there are those animals in which the Bezoar is produced, the goat in which it is most frequent, the cow, in which it is of less value, and the ape, in which it is very seldom found, but is of most efficacy. Through either of these forms the Archeus might have passed. But how the Bezoar which is formed in the stomach of these animals should have concreted in a sort of wen upon the woman's head was a circumstance altogether anomalous.
At Mistra, a town built from the ruins of Sparta, the sick are daily brought and laid at the doors of the metropolitan Church, as at the gates of the ancient temples, that those who repair thither to worship, may indicate to them the remedies by which their health may be recovered.