The historical collection of medical classics in the Library of the Surgeon-General's Office / Fielding H. Garrison.

  • Garrison, Fielding H. (Fielding Hudson), 1870-1935.
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The historical collection of medical classics in the Library of the Surgeon-General's Office / Fielding H. Garrison. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    ph3^sicians in the Middle Ages, Oriental medicine has inainl_Y an anthropologic or esoteric interest. The lead- ing monuments of pre-Hippocratic medicine, including the Elmrs Papyrus, the Code Hamnrabi, the Charaka Samhita and the Snrnta, are, of course, on exhi- bition in- the library hall, and no one will chal- lenge the importance of these documents. From the hieratic writings of the papyri we get a clear idea of the priest-like dignity of the ancient physician’s calling, the various diseases and the extensive materia medica known to the ancient Egyptians. From the Code Ham- nrabi we sense the importance attached to physicians’ fees even 2,200 years before Christ. From the Snrnta, the great storehonse of Aryan surgery, we learn that to their lofty Brahminical code of ethics the ancient Hindu physicians united a highly specialized knowledge of operative procedure and of surgical instrumentation that was not improved on by the Greeks and Eomans who came after them. Aryan skill in surgery has been an unbroken tradition, even through the Dark Ages, when surgery was most under a ban. But with this single exception and in the face of the researches of savants like Ebers, Joachim, von Oefele, Jolly, Preuss and Bar- tels, it is doubtful whether the records of Egyptian, Indian, Chinese, Mesopotamian and Babylonian med- icine can be ranked with the classic texts. Cuneiform, hieroglyphic, runic and palm-leaf inscriptions all point to one fact, that ancient medicine and the medicine of primitive peoples, whether Accadian or Scandinavian, Slavic or Celtic, Eoman or Polynesian, has been the same throughout space and time—in each case an affair of charms and spells, plant lore and psychotherapy, to stave off the effect of supernatural agencies. It may interest us vastly to know that the aaa disease of the Egvptian pap^ui was* identical with hookworm infection; that the Chinese had a pulse-lore and practiced acupunc- ture; that Finsen’s red-light treatment of small-pox was known to ancient Japanese physicians as it was to John of Gaddesden; that an early Persian manuscript pictures a permanent gastric fistula like Alexis St. Mar- tin’s; that Machaon and Podaliriiis were the first naval surgeons, and so forth. Yet these are after all only waifs and estrays of information, and as information is not knowledge, so disconnected facts do not make a scientific record. Such a record implies not only the isolation and collation of facts, but their interpreta-