Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine

by Sir James Elliott

What the influence of Christ's life on earth on the medical art of His time was is a difficult question. It must be remembered that He came to save the souls and not the bodies of men, not to rapidly alter social conditions nor to teach science. The eternal life of man was the subject of transcendent importance, and it is no doubt true that many of the early Christians neglected their bodies for the cure of their souls. As against this, the gospel of love taught that all men are brothers, both bond and free, and this led to mutual help in physical suffering, and to the foundation of charitable institutions. In the times of persecution of the Christians many of them welcomed suffering and death as the portal to eternal bliss.

It has been asserted that the miraculous cures wrought by Christ for His own purposes were an intimation to His followers to neglect the ordinary means of natural cure, and that this placed a Christian doctor in the position of having to abandon his calling. This is not so. To St. Luke—a Christian physician and the writer of the third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles—the performance by Christ of miracles of healing presented no difficulties, for he was the travelling medical adviser of St. Paul, and accompanied him on three journeys, from Troas to Philippi, from Philippi to Jerusalem, and from Cæsarea to Rome (A.D. 62). St. Paul wrote: "For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life, but we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God, which raiseth the dead: who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver: in whom we trust that He will yet deliver us." St. Paul exercised faith, but also used the means of cure prescribed by "the beloved physician." In a very scholarly book published by the Dublin University Press in 1882, the Rev. W. K. Hobart, LL.D., shows that St. Luke was acquainted with the technical medical terms of the Greek medical writers. St. Luke was an Asiatic Greek. Dr. Hobart writes: "Finally, it should not be left out of account that, in any illness from which he might be suffering, there was no one to whom St. Paul would be likely to apply with such confidence as to St. Luke, for it is probable that, in the whole extent of the Roman Empire, the only Christian physician at this time was St. Luke." In later years the pretence of performing miracles to cure diseases had a great effect in advancing superstition and retarding scientific investigation.

Tacitus and Suetonius record miracles alleged to have been performed by Vespasian. He is said to have anointed the eyes of a blind man at Alexandria with the royal spittle, and to have restored his sight. Another case was that of a man who had lost the use of his hands, and Vespasian touched them with his foot and thus restored their function. It is interesting to follow the career of Proclus, the last rector of the Neoplatonic School, "whose life," says Gibbon, "with that of his scholar Isidore, composed by two of their most learned disciples, exhibits a most deplorable picture of the second childhood of human reason." By long fasting and prayer Proclus pretended to possess the supernatural power of expelling all diseases.

The priests of the Church denounced the practice of Anatomy, and so changed the progress made by the Alexandrian School, and by men like Galen, into the ignorance of a thousand years. The body was the temple of the Holy Ghost, and should not therefore be desecrated by dissection. "Strangers' rests" and hospitals were connected with the monasteries, and were exceedingly useful, notably in the time of the Crusades, but these Church institutions were in a very insanitary condition, for the maxim that cleanliness is next to godliness had little application among the religious orders of the Middle Ages. Dr. Walsh attempts to show that the Reformers blackened the fair fame of the Church they had left, and states that it is to "this unfortunate state of affairs, and not real opposition on the part of the Popes to science," that we owe the belief in "the supposed opposition between the Church and Science."[8] That the Popes did something to foster medical science in a spasmodic kind of way, that papal physicians were appointed and that the Church exercised control over some seats of learning may be freely admitted. That the monasteries preserved some of the Latin classics that they were not all corrupt, and that all monks were not ignorant and idle, are facts beyond dispute. No doubt, too, the enemies of Christianity have overstated their case, but when all is said, the fact remains that the Church enjoyed great opportunities for promoting knowledge and investigating disease, and failed to avail itself of them to such an extent that for ages no real progress was made. This is certainly not an extreme opinion. It would be nearer the truth to say that not only was no progress made, but that the advances made by Hippocrates, by the school of Alexandria, by Celsus, and by Galen, were lost.

In conclusion, in spite of the dreadful blunders and perversions of the Church in the Early and Middle Ages, and the partial eclipse which Christianity suffered, the teaching of its Founder slowly but surely ended the harsh and cruel ways of the pagans, and was the prime factor in promoting the altruism of later times, of which medical knowledge and medical service form a very important part.

FOOTNOTES

[1] "Gesta Christi; or a History of Human Progress under Christianity," by C. Loring Brace, fourth edition, pp. 33, 34.

[2] "De Ira," i, 15.

[3] Vide "Gesta Christi," Brace.

[4] Vide "The Bible in Europe," Joseph McCabe.