The homoeopathic theory and practice of medicine (Volume 1).

  • Marcy, E. E. (Erastus Edgerton), 1815-1900.
Date:
1864
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The homoeopathic theory and practice of medicine (Volume 1). Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    of the cherry laurel before ascending the prophetic tripod. Others suppose they used stramonium or opium. (Paris, Vol. 4, 24.) In some cases they prescribed bloodletting, purgation, emetics, friction, sea-bathing, and various mineral waters. Beyond all this, and exercis- ing a powerful influence on the sick and their friends, was the mental influence of the doctor-priests. Admission to the temples was only permitted after certain processes of purification had been undergone. The interrogation and the answers of the oracle were often delayed for a day, and one or two nights while the patient remained lying in the temples. Abstinence, prayers, fastings, sacrifices followed. In some of the temples a ram or a fowl, at Cyrene a goat, and in other places various animals were sacrificed to iEsculapius before the wall of the oracle was asked for. Socrates, requested in his last interview with his friends, that they would sacrifice for him a cock to iEsculapius. The answers were sometimes delayed, and sometimes mystical and dif- ficult of interpretation. Sometimes the divinity was made to appear in the form of a serpent, devouring the cakes upon his altar; other manifestations were made through dreams which were interpreted by the priests. The temples of the god of Medicine thus became the first hospitals in which the sick were regularly treated. To them those who could reach them brought the afflicted; and those who could not, in various countries, exposed the sick by the side of the higlrways, that they might receive the advice of every one who passed. {Good, Co- han is, Renouard, &c.) In these early ages the knowledge that was ac- cumulated by such means as these was chiefly transmitted to posterity by tradition. {Strdbo) The chief temples of iEsculapius were those of Epidaurus in the PelOponessus, Pergamus in Asia Minor, Rhodes in the isle of Cos, Cnidos, and Cyrene in Lybia. Besides these nearly one hundred have been enumerated in the different countries afterwards included in the Roman Empire. (Schttlze Hist. Med.) In these temples the first re- corded experience of men in the treatment of diseases were transmitted to posterity in the form of inscriptions on plates of metal, wood or stone. The priests reported to new patients the history of cases which had been previously treated with success. The descriptions of cases and the methods of cure were briefly and imperfectly given; but they were of immense value to men in succeeding generations. They formed the first rudiments of that art which was in future to grow into a sublime and noble science, through that very method of observation and experiment which was there first inaugurated in the world. These temples of the god of Medicine maintained their rank in the estimation of men long after the genius and industry of Hippocrates had reformed the theories and practice of ancient medicine. Democedes,who had been the slave of a tyrant of Sardis, became court physician to Darius, Emperor