Volume 1

Professional anecdotes, or ana of medical literature.

Date:
1825
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Professional anecdotes, or ana of medical literature. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    claim, since we learn that among other heroes, iEsculapius himself was his pupil. His princi- pal excellency is said to have lain in the management of wounds and ulcers, which was the only art of the age in which he lived. So celebrated was Chiron for the cure of ulcers, as Galen informs us, that when a sore was obstinate, and could not be healed up, it was customary in later times to call it a Chi- ronian ulcer, intimating by the expression, that it was an ailment of such malignity as to baf- fle the skill of Chiron himself. The discovery of the virtues of the greater and lesser Centaury is imputed to him; and the plants themselves are supposed to derive both their present and ancient appellations from the same circumstance. Of the pupils of Chiron the first in medical reputation was iEsculapius. He was also a prince of Thessaly, and one of the heroes who embarked in the expedition of the Argonauts, as his two sons Podalirius and Machaon en- gaged afterwards in the cause of Greece against Troy. He is said to have extended medicine even beyond the bounds of his master Chiron. Not only deeply versant in the surgery of his age, the knowledge of external medicaments, and the art of incisions, he is represented to have pushed his researches into a more difficult