In all cases art and observation precede and beget science, and give origin to its gradual construction. But soon science, so built up, begins to reflect new light upon its parents—observation and art—helps them onward, expands the range of vision, corrects their errors, improves their methods and suggests new ones. The stars were mapped out and counted by the shepherds watching their flocks by night, long before astronomy assumed any scientific form.
From the earliest ages the pains and disorders of the human body must have arrested men's anxious attention and claimed their succor. The facts observed, both as to hurts and diseases, and as to their attempted remedying, were handed down by tradition or by record from generation to generation in continually increasing abundance, and out of the repeated survey and comparison of these has grown the recognition of certain laws of events and rules of action, which together constitute “medical science.”
There is good reason for the belief that Egypt was the country in which the art of medicine, as well as the other arts of civilized life, was first cultivated with any degree of success, the offices of the priest and the physician being probably combined in the same person. In the writings of Moses there are various allusions to the practice of medicine amongst the Jews, especially with reference to the diagnosis and treatment of leprosy. The priests were the physicians, and their treatment mainly aimed at promoting cleanliness and preventing contagion. The same practice is approved by the light of latest science.
Chiron, the Centaur, is said to have introduced the art of medicine amongst the Greeks, but the early history of the art is entirely legendary. Æsculapius appears in Homer as an excellent physician of human origin; in the later legends he becomes the god of the healing art. His genealogy is obscure and altogether fabulous. He, however, soon surpassed his teacher, Chiron, and succeeded so far as to restore the dead to life (as the story goes). This offended Hades, who began to fear that his realm would not be sufficiently peopled; complained to Zeus (Jove) of the innovation, and Jove slew Æsculapius by a flash of lightning. After this he was deified by the gratitude of mankind, and was especially worshiped at Epidaurus, where a temple and a grove were consecrated to him. His statue in this temple was formed of gold and ivory, and represents him as a god seated on a throne, and holding in one hand a staff with a snake coiled around it, the other hand resting on the head of a snake; a dog, as an emblem of watchfulness, at his feet (an intimation very appropriate for the medical profession). The Asclepiades, the followers of Æsculapius, inherited and kept the secrets of the healing art; or, assuming that Æsculapius was merely a divine symbol, the Asclepiades must be regarded as a medical, priestly caste, who preserved as mysteries the doctrine of medicine. The members of the caste were bound by an oath—the Hippocratis jusjurandum—not to divulge the secrets of their profession.
In Rome, in the year 292 B. C., a pestilence (probably malarial fever) prevailed. The Sibyline books directed that Æsculapius (statue!) must be brought from Epidaurus. Accordingly, an embassy was sent to this place, and when they had made their request, a snake crept out of the temple into the ship. Regarding this as the god Æsculapius, they sailed to Italy, and as they entered the Tiber the snake sprang out upon an island, where afterwards a temple was erected to Æsculapius and a company of priests appointed to take charge of the service and practice the art of medicine. The name Æsculapius, then, is only an impersonation of medicine in the remote ages, or early ages of Grecian history.
Hippocrates is the first writer of medicine whose works have come down to us with anything like authority other than fable. Indeed, he was the most celebrated physician of antiquity. He was the son of Heracleides, also a physician, and belonged to the family of the Asclepiades, said to be about eighteen generations from Æsculapius. His mother was said to be descended from Hercules.
Hippocrates was born in the island of Cos (more anciently Meropis), an island of the Grecian archipelago of about one hundred square miles, probably about the year 460 B. C. Instructed in medicine by his father and other contemporary medical men, he traveled in various parts of Greece and Asia minor. He finally settled and practiced his profession at Cos, but died in Thessaly at the age of one hundred and four years (B. C. 357). Little is known of his personal history, other than that he was highly esteemed as a physician and an author, and that he raised the reputation of the medical school of Cos to a high degree. His works were studied and quoted by Plato. He was famous in his own time, and his works, some sixty in number, have in them many things that are not unworthy of consideration even after the lapse of twenty-two hundred years. Many of the works ascribed to Hippocrates are not well authenticated.
He divided the causes of diseases into two principal classes—the first consisting of the influence of seasons, climates, water, situations, etc.; the second of more personal causes, such as the food and exercise of the individual patient. His belief in the influence which different climates exert on the human constitution is very strongly expressed. He ascribes to this influence both the conformation of the body and the disposition of the mind, and hence accounts for the difference between the hardy Greek and the Asiatic.
The four humors of the body (blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile) were regarded by him as the primary seats of disease; health was the result of the due combination (or crasis) of these humors, and illness was the consequence of a disturbance of this crasis. When a disease was progressing favorably these humors underwent a certain change (coction), which was the sign of returning health, as preparing the way for the expulsion of morbid matters, or crisis, these crises having a tendency to occur at definite periods, which were hence called critical days.
His treatment of disease was cautious and what we now term expectant, i. e., it consisted chiefly, often solely, in attention to diet and regimen; and he was sometimes reproached with letting his patients die by doing nothing to keep them alive.