III. THE MEDICINE OF CHALDÆA, BABYLONIA, AND ASSYRIA…

III. THE MEDICINE OF CHALDÆA, BABYLONIA, AND ASSYRIA

The Ancient Religion of Accadia akin to Shamanism.—Demon Theory of Disease in Chaldæan Medicine.—Chaldæan Magic.—Medical Ignorance of the Babylonians.—Assyrian Disease-Demons.—Charms.—Origin of the Sabbath.

Chaldæa was probably only second to Egypt in the antiquity of its civilization. The founders of the Babylonian and Assyrian empires were a Semitic tribe, and were the first people who worked in metals, and their knowledge of astronomy proves them to have been possessed of some amount of scientific attainments. Their practice of medicine was inextricably mixed with conjurations of spirits, magic, and astrology.

The name now given to the primitive inhabitants of Babylon is Accadians. Sayce considers them to have been the earliest civilizers of Eastern Asia. From the Accadians, he thinks the Assyrians, Phœnicians, and Greeks derived their knowledge of philosophy and the arts. Their libraries existed seventeen centuries B.C.

The ancient religion of Accad was very similar to the Shamanism professed by Siberian and Samoyed tribes at the present time. There was believed to be a spirit in every object. Good or bad spirits swarmed in the world, and there was scarcely anything that could be done which might not risk demoniacal possession. These good and bad spirits were controlled by priests and sorcerers. All diseases were caused by evil spirits, and the bulls and other creatures which guarded the entrance to houses were there to protect them from their power. The priests were magicians. There were at one period of the development of the Babylonian mythology three hundred spirits of heaven and six hundred spirits of earth; the most dreadful of these latter were the “seven spirits,” who were born without father and mother, and brought plague and evil on the earth. Magic formulæ for warding off the attacks of demons were commonly used, and charms and talismans were extensively employed. The phylacteries of the Jews were talismans, and were of Accadian origin. The sorcerer bound his charm, “knotted with seven knots, round the limbs of the sick man, and this, with the further application of holy water, would, it was believed, infallibly produce a cure; while the same result might be brought about by fixing a sentence out of a good book on the sufferer’s head as he lay in bed.”[202]

Accadian literature, Mr. George Smith tells us, is rich in collections of charms and formulæ of exorcism belonging to the very earliest period of Babylonian history. There are magic formulæ of all kinds, some to ward off sorcery, some to bewitch other persons.

The following is a specimen of the exorcisms used to drive away evil spirits, and to cure the diseases which were believed to be caused by their agency:—

“The noxious god, the noxious spirit of the neck, the spirit of the desert, the spirit of the mountain, the spirit of the sea, the spirit of the morass, the noxious cherub of the city, this noxious wind which seizes the body (and) the health of the body: O, spirit of heaven, remember! O, spirit of earth, remember!

“The burning spirit of the neck which seizes the man, the burning spirit which seizes the man, the spirit which works evil, the creation of the evil spirit: O, spirit of heaven, remember! O, spirit of earth, remember!

“Wasting, want of health, the evil spirit of the ulcer, spreading quinsey of the gullet, the violent ulcer, the noxious ulcer: O, spirit of heaven, remember! O, spirit of earth, remember!

“Sickness of the entrails, sickness of the heart, the palpitation of a sick heart, sickness of bile, sickness of the head, noxious colic, the agitation of terror, flatulency of the entrails, noxious illness, lingering sickness, nightmare: O, spirit of heaven, remember! O, spirit of earth, remember!”[203]

In the great magic collection of invocations copied by the order of Asurbanipal, we have a long litany on the “Spirit of Fever”; the lords and ladies of the earth, stars, the light of life, the spirit of Hurki and his talismanic ship, the spirit of Utu, umpire of the gods, and many others are implored to “conjure it.”[204]

Professor Lenormant considers that the idea of punishment of sin by means of disease was a dogma of a later school of Chaldæan thought. The old religion of spirits upon which Chaldæan magic was originally founded was independently the doctrine of the priests of magic, so that there were two sets of priests in later Chaldæan civilization—the old class who composed incantations to the spirits who fought with and replaced the disease-demons, and the theological priests who urged repentance for sin as the only means of the cure of disease.[205]

In the Accadian philosophy there was in everything a dualism of spirits. Innumerable hosts of them caused all the phenomena of nature, from the movements of the stars to the life and death, the health and disease of every human being. This dualism was as marked as that of the religion of Zoroaster; everywhere and in everything the good spirits fought against the evil ones, discord prevailed throughout the universe; and on this conception rested the whole theory of sacred magic. Man’s only help against the attacks of bad spirits, and the plagues and diseases which they brought upon him, lay in the invocation of good spirits by means of priests, sacred rites, talismans, and charms. These could put to flight the demons by helping the good spirits in their constant warfare with them. Magic therefore became a system elaborated with scientific exactness, and a vast pantheon of gods became necessary. Hea was the great god of conjurational magic; he was the supreme protector of men and of nature in the war between good and evil. When neither word, nor rite, nor talisman, nor help of the other divinities of heaven availed to help mankind, Hea was all-powerful; and this was because, as Lenormant says,[206] Hea was alone acquainted with the awful power of the supreme name. “Before this name everything bows in heaven and in earth and in Hades, and it alone can conquer the Maskim (a species of evil demon), and stop their ravages. The gods themselves are enthralled by this name, and render it obedience.”

Images of demons were used by the Chaldæans as talismans against the attacks of demons. In a magical hymn to the sun against sorcery and witchcraft, and their influence on the worshipper, the sun is reminded that the images of the bad spirits have been shut up in heaps of corn. The invocation concludes:—

“May the great gods, who have created me, take my hand! Thou who curest my face, direct my hand, direct it, lord, light of the universe, Sun.”[207]

In a hymn composed for the cure of some disease, the priest, addressing the god, speaks of the invalid in the third person:—

“As for me, the lord has sent me, the great lord, Hea, has sent me.——— Thou, at thy coming, cure the race of man, cause a ray of health to shine upon him, cure his disease. The man, son of his god, is burdened with the load of his omissions and transgressions. His feet and his hands suffer cruelly, he is painfully exhausted by the disease. Sun, at the raising of my hands, come at the call, eat his food, absorb his victim, turn his weakness into strength.”[208]

In the “War of the Seven Wicked Spirits against the Moon,” we have an incantation which was destined to cure the king of a disease caused by the wicked spirits.[209]

In the Chaldæan creed all diseases were the work of demons. This is why Herodotus found no physicians in Babylon and Assyria. There was no science of medicine; “it was simply a branch of magic, and was practised by incantations, exorcism, the use of philters and enchanted drinks.”[210]

Of course the priests made it their business to compound their drinks of such drugs as they had discovered to possess therapeutic virtue. In ancient times magic and medicine were thus closely united. It could not have been always faith alone which cured the patient, but faith plus a little poppy juice would work wonders in many cases. It became therefore greatly to the interest of the priests and magicians to learn the properties of herbs, and the value of the juices and extracts of plants. Out of evil, therefore, mankind reaped this great and valuable knowledge. The two gravest and most fatal diseases with which the Chaldæans were acquainted, says M. Lenormant,[211] were the plague and fever, the Namtar and the Idpa. Naturally they were represented as two demons, the strongest and most formidable who afflict mankind. An old fragment says:—

The execrable Idpa acts upon the head of man, The malevolent Namtar upon the life of man, The malevolent Utug upon the forehead of man, The malevolent Alal upon the chest of man, The malevolent Gigim upon the bowels of man, The malevolent Telal upon the hand of man.[212]

The use of magic knots as a cure for diseases was firmly believed in by the ancient Chaldees. M. Lenormant[213] gives a translation of one of the formulæ supposed to have been used against diseases of the head.

Knot on the right and arrange flat in regular bands, on the left a woman’s diadem; divide it twice in seven little bands; ... gird the head of the invalid with it; gird the forehead of the invalid with it; gird the seat of life with it; gird his hands and his feet; seat him on his bed; pour on him enchanted waters. Let the disease of his head be carried away into the heavens like a violent wind; ... may the earth swallow it up like passing waters!

Sir Henry Rawlinson has discovered that there were three classes of Chaldæan doctors, exactly in accordance with the enumeration of the prophet Daniel. These were the Khartumim, or conjurors, the Chakamim, or physicians, and the Asaphim, or theosophists (see Daniel ii. 2; v. ii).

The Babylonian doctrine of disease was that the hosts of evil spirits in the air entered man’s body, and could only be expelled by the incantations of the exorcist. These disease-demons were addressed as “the noxious neck spirit,” “the burning spirit of the entrails which devours the man.” Headache was caused by evil spirits which were commanded by the charmer to fly away “like grasshoppers” into the sky.[214]

Herodotus says of the Babylonians: “The following custom seems to me the wisest of their institutions. They have no physicians, but when a man is ill, they lay him in the public square, and the passers-by come up to him, and if they have ever had his disease themselves, or have known any one who has suffered from it, they give him advice, recommending him to do whatever they found good in their own case, or in the case known to them; and no one is allowed to pass the sick man in silence without asking him what his ailment is.”[215]

A Babylonian exorcism of disease-demons has been found in the following terms: the translation is by Prof. Sayce.[216]

“On the sick man, by means of sacrifice, may perfect health shine like bronze; may the sun-god give this man life; may Merodach, the eldest son of the deep, give him strength, prosperity, and health; may the king of heaven preserve, may the king of earth preserve.”

A curse against a sorcerer declares that “by written spells he shall not be delivered.”

The elementary spirits were supposed to be seven baleful winds, which were considered general causes of disease. One of the formulæ of exorcising these dreadful seven is translated by Mr. Smith from a great collection of hymns to the gods which was compiled B.C. 2000.

“Seven (are) they, seven (are) they. In the abyss of the deep seven (are) they. In the brightness of heaven seven (are) they. In the abyss of the deep in a palace (was) their growth. Male they (are) not, female they (are) not. Moreover the deep (is) their pathway. Wife they have not, child is not born to them. Law (and) kindness know they not. Prayer and supplication hear they not. (Among) the thorns of the mountain (was) their growth. To Hea (the god of the sea) (are) they hostile. The throne-bearers of the gods (are) they. Disturbing the watercourse in the canal are they set. Wicked (are) they, wicked (are) they. Seven (are) they, seven (are) they, seven twice again are they.”[217]

M. Lenormant gives a translation of a very long Accadian incantation against disease-demons; it is in the form of a litany, and each verse ends with the words:—

“Spirit of the heavens, conjure it! Spirit of the earth, conjure it!”

There are some twenty-eight verses in all, and a great number of diseases are mentioned. I have only space for a few of these.

“Ulcers which spread, malignant ulcers.”

“Disease of the bowels, the disease of the heart, the palpitation of the diseased heart, Disease of the vision, disease of the head,” etc.

“Painful fever, violent fever, The fever which never leaves man, Unremitting fever, The lingering fever, malignant fever. Spirit of the heavens, conjure it,” etc., etc.

In the Assyrian version it seems to be hinted that the expectoration of phthisical patients was as dangerous as our modern bacteriologists declare it to be, for we have these words:—

“The poisonous consumption which in the mouth malignantly ascends.”[218]

In the course of Layard’s excavations at Nineveh, a divining chamber was discovered, at the entrance to which figures of the magi were found. One of the orders of these magicians was the “Mecasphim,” translated by Jerome and the Greeks “enchanters,” such as used noxious herbs and drugs, the blood of victims, and the bones of the dead for their superstitious rites. Another class was the “Casdim,” who were a sort of philosophers, who were exempt from all employment except the duty of studying physic, astrology, the foretelling of future events, the interpretation of dreams by augury, etc.[219]

The Assyrians had different demons for different diseases—some injured the head, others attacked the hands and feet.[220]

The Assyrians believed that seven evil spirits might enter a man at the same time; and there is a tablet which tells of the protection afforded by a god against such demons. When the deity stands at the sick man’s bedside, “those seven evil spirits he shall root out, and shall expel them from his body, and those seven shall never return to the sick man again.”[221]

“Sometimes images of the gods were brought into the sick-room, and written texts from the holy books were put on the walls, and bound round the sick man’s brains. Holy texts were spread out on each side of the threshold.”[222]

In Mr. George Smith’s History of Assyria from the Monuments, there is a translation of an Assyrian tablet from Assur-bani-pal’s library. The tablet is on the charms to expel evil curses and spells. “It is supposed in it,” says Mr. Smith, “that a man was under a curse, and Merodach, one of the gods, seeing him next to the god Hea, his father, enquired how to cure him. Hea, the god of wisdom, in answer related the ceremonies and incantations for effecting his recovery, and these are recorded in the tablet for the benefit of the faithful in after times.”

TRANSLATION OF TABLET.

1. The evil curse like a demon fixes on a man 2. a raging voice over him is fixed 3. an evil voice over him is fixed 4. the evil curse is a great calamity 5. that man the evil curse slaughters like a lamb 6. his god from over him departs 7. his goddess stands angry at his side 8. the raging voice like a cloak covers him and bears him away 9. the god Merodach saw him and 10. to his father Hea into the house he entered and said 11. My father, the evil curse like a demon fixes on a man 12. And a second time he spake to him 13. To cure that man I am not able, explain to me how to do it. 14. Hea to his son Merodach answered 15. My son, thou knowest not how, I will recount to thee how to do it, 16. Merodach, thou knowest not how, I will reveal to thee how to do it, 17. What I know, thou shalt know. 18. Go my son Merodach. 19. pure — — — carry to him 20. that spell break, and that spell remove. 21. From the curse of his father 22. from the curse of his mother 23. from the curse of his elder brother 24. from the curse of the incantation which the man does not know 25. the spell in the words of the lips of the god Hea 26. Like a plant break 27. like a fruit crush 28. like a branch split. 29. For the spell the invocation of heaven may he repeat the invocation of earth may he repeat 30. Thus: Like unto this plant which is broken may be the spell. 31. In the burning flames it burns 32. in fragments it shall not be collected 33. together or divided it shall not be used 34. its fragments the earth shall not take 35. its seeds shall not produce and the sun shall not raise them 36. for the festival of god and king it shall not be used 37. — — — — — — — — — — — — — 38. the evil invocation, the finger pointing, the marking, the cursing, the sinning, 39. the evil which in my body, my limbs and my teeth is fixed, 40. like this plant may it be broken and 41. in this day may the burning flames consume, 42. may it drive out the spell and I shall be free 43. Thus: Like unto this fruit which is crushed may be the spell, 44. in the burning flames it burns 45. to its severed stalk it shall not return 46. for the banquet of god and king it shall not be used 47. — — — — — — — — — — — — — 48. the evil invocation, the finger pointing, the marking, the cursing, the sinning. 49. the evil which in my body, my limbs and my teeth is fixed 50. like this fruit may it be crushed and 51. in this day may the burning flames consume, 52. may it drive out the spell and I shall be free 53. Thus: Like unto this branch which is split may be the spell, 54. in the burning flames it burns 55. its fibres to the trunk shall not return 56. to satisfy a wish it shall not come 57. — — — — — — — — — — — — — 58. the evil invocation, the finger pointing, the marking, the cursing, the sinning. 59. the evil which in my body, my limbs and my teeth is fixed 60. like this branch may it be split and 61. in this day may the burning flames consume, 62. may it drive out the spell and I shall be free 63. Thus: Like unto this wool which is torn may be the spell, 64. in the burning flames it burns 65. to the back of the sheep it shall not return 66. for the clothing of god and king it shall not be used 67. — — — — — — — — — — — — — 68. the evil invocation, the finger pointing, the marking, the cursing, the sinning. 69. the evil which in my body, my limbs and my teeth is fixed 70. like this wool may it be torn and 71. in this day may the burning flames consume 72. may it drive out the spell and I shall be free 73. Thus: Like unto this flag which is torn may be the spell, 74. in the burning flames it burns 75. on to its mast it shall not return 76. to satisfy a wish it shall not come 77. — — — — — — — — — — — — — 78. the evil invocation, the finger pointing, the marking, the cursing, the sinning. 79. the evil which in my body, my limbs and my teeth is fixed 80. like this flag may it be torn and 81. in this day may the burning flames consume 82. may it drive out the spell and I shall be free 83. Thus: Like unto this thread which is broken may be the spell, 84. in the burning flames it burns 85. the weaver into a cloak shall not weave it 86. for the clothing of god and king it shall not be used 87. — — — — — — — — — — — — — 88. the evil invocation, the finger pointing, the marking, the cursing, the sinning. 89. the evil which in my body, my limbs and my teeth is fixed. 90. like this thread may it be broken and 91. in this day may the burning flames consume 92. may it drive out the spell and I shall be free.

The image of Hea placed in the doorway kept away the disease-demons.

In the Babylonian and Assyrian rooms of the British Museum there is a collection of bowls inscribed with charms in Chaldee, Syriac, and Mandaitie. It is supposed that they were used by sick persons, who drank their physic from them, trusting that it would thereby be more efficacious. As they drank they recited the formulæ and names of the archangels, Michael, Raphael, Ariel, Shaltiel, Malkiel, etc., which were inscribed upon them. The catalogue says that the earliest of these bowls were made about B.C. 200. Many are from Tell-Ibrahim (Cutha). It may be mentioned in this connection that Catholics frequently make the sign of the cross over medicinal potions before taking them.

The origin of the Sabbath as a day of cessation from all labour is evidently Accadian. In the following translation of an Assyrian tablet[223] we find the Sabbatarian principle in full force.

“The seventh day, feast of Merodach and Zir: Panibu, a great feast, a day of rest. The prince of the people will eat neither the flesh of birds nor cooked fruits. He will not change his clothing. He will put on no white robe. He will bring no offering. The king will not ascend into his chariot. He will not perform his duties as royal law-giver. In a garrison city the commander will permit no proclamations to his soldiers. The art of the physician will not be practised.” This is another proof that the Jews derived many of their religious customs from the Assyrians and Accadians. The Assyrian Sabbath was evidently observed as strictly as under the Mosaic code. It is curious to note that the physician was not permitted to exercise his merciful calling on that day, and it throws light on the objection of the Jews to Christ that it was not lawful to heal on the Sabbath-day.

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IV. THE MEDICINE OF THE HINDUS

The Aryans.—Hindu Philosophy.—The Vedas.—The Shastres of Charaka and Susruta.—Code of Menu.—The Brahmans.—Medical Practitioners.—Strabo on the Hindu Philosophers.—Charms.—Buddhism and Medicine.—Jíwaka, Buddha’s Physician.—The Pulse.—Knowledge of Anatomy and Surgery in Ancient Times.—Surgical Instruments.—Decadence of Hindu Medical Science.—Goddesses of Disease.—Origin of Hospitals in India.

The Hindus are considered by Max Müller to be much older even as regards their civilization than the Egyptians. This belief is based on his study of their language, which he says existed “before there was a single Greek statue, a single Babylonian bull, or a single Egyptian sphinx.” According to him, the noble Indo-Germanic or Aryan people, from whom have descended the Brahman, the Rájput, and the Englishman, had their earliest home, not in Hindustan, but in Central Asia. (Max Müller’s theory is now superseded by anthropological researches so far as the Europeans are concerned.) This splendid race drove before them into the mountains or reduced to slavery the Dasyus, the obscure aborigines, the non-Aryan primæval peoples. The earliest Aryan poets composed the Rig-Veda at least three thousand, perhaps even four thousand years ago. The handsome Aryan fair-complexioned conquerors spoke with the utmost contempt of “the noseless” or “flat-nosed” Mongolian aborigines, who, in the Vedic poems, from being “gross feeders on flesh,” “lawless,” “non-sacrificing” tribes, were afterwards described as “monsters” and “demons.”[224]

It is necessary, if we wish to understand the principles of Hindu medicine, to glance at the philosophy and religion of the Brahmans and Buddhists. The Aryan conquerors descending through the Himalayas were a sober, industrious, courageous people, who lived a pastoral life, and knowing nothing of the enervating attractions of great cities, required no other medical treatment than simple folk medicine everywhere affords. Their earliest literature is found in the “Vedic Hymns,” the “Sacred Books of the Hindus,” which were composed by the wisest and best of the men, who were warriors and husbandmen, and the priests and physicians of their own households. They gradually acquired priestly supremacy over a wider range. Thus arose the Brahmans, the “Offerers of Potent Prayer.” The Rig-Veda refers to physicians, and speaks of the healing power of medicinal herbs; and the Atharva-Veda contains an invocation against the fever-demon, so that medical matters began very early to receive attention after the conquest of India by the Aryans.

“Hinduism,” says Professor Monier Williams, “is a creed which may be expressed by the two words, spiritual pantheism.”[225] Of all beliefs this is the simplest. Nothing really exists but the One Universal Spirit; man’s soul is identical with that Spirit. Separate existence apart from the Supreme is mere illusion; consequently every man’s highest aim should be to get rid for ever of doing, having, and being, and strive to consider himself a part of the One Spirit. This in a few words is esoteric Hinduism. When we attempt to study the endless ramifications of the exoteric, or popular belief, the system, so far from being simple, is infinitely complicated. God may amuse Himself by illusory appearances. Light in the rainbow is one, but it manifests itself variously. All material objects, and the gods, demons, good and evil spirits, men, and animals are emanations from the One Universal Spirit; though temporarily they exist apart from him, they will all ultimately be reabsorbed into their source. In the Sanskrit language, which is the repository of Veda, or “knowledge,” we have the vehicle of Hindu philosophy. The systems of Hindu philosophy which grew out of the third division of the Vedas, called the Upanishads, are six, and are given in Professor Monier Williams’ work already referred to as—

1. The Nyāya, founded by Gotama. 2. The Vais’eshika, by Kanāda. 3. The Sānkhya, by Kapila. 4. The Yoga, by Pantanjali. 5. The Mīmānsā, by Jaimini. 6. The Vedānta, by Bādarāyana or Vyāsa.

We know neither the dates of these systems, nor which of them preceded the other.

Oriental scholars tell us that, 500 years before Christ, in India, China, Greece, and Persia men began to formulate philosophical systems of religious belief, and to elaborate scientific ideas of the world in which they lived. Williams considers the Vais’eshika system of philosophy the most interesting of all the systems, from the parallels it offers to European philosophical ideas. This system goes more correctly than the others into the qualities of all substances. It is therefore more scientific, as we should say. It is most interesting to discover how nearly the doctrine of the atoms approaches our Western teaching. The following is Professor Williams’ account of these views:—

“First, then, as to the formation of the world, this is supposed to be effected by the aggregation of Anus, or ‘Atoms.’ These are innumerable and eternal, and are eternally aggregated, disintegrated, and re-integrated by the power of Adrishta. According to the Kanādas Sūtras, an atom is ‘something existing, having no cause, eternal.’ They are, moreover, described as less than the least, invisible, intangible, indivisible, imperceptible by the senses, and as having each of them a Vis’esha or eternal essence of its own. The combination of these atoms is first into an aggregate of two, called Duy-anuka. Three of them, again, are supposed to combine into a Trasa-renu, which, like a mote in a sunbeam, has just magnitude enough to be perceptible.”[226]

In the Sānkhya philosophy we find something very like Darwinism. “There cannot be the production of something out of nothing; that which is not cannot be developed into that which is. The production of what does not already exist (potentially) is impossible, like a horn on a man; because there must of necessity be a material out of which a product is developed; and because everything cannot occur everywhere at all times; and because anything possible must be produced from something competent to produce it.” (Aphorisms, i. 78, 114-117).[227]

The Upa-Vedas, or secondary Vedas, treat of various sciences, one of which, Ayur-Veda, is the “science of life,” or medicine. By some this is considered to belong to the Atharva-Veda; by others to the Rig-Veda. By Ayur-Veda we are to understand something derived immediately from the gods. The supplementary revelation known as Upa-Vedas dates about 350 B.C., and there we find Brahmanical medicine already developing.[228]

“Of all ancient nations,” says Elphinstone, “the Egyptians are the one whom the Hindus seem most to have resembled.”[229]

There is good reason for believing that the ancient Greeks derived much of their philosophy and religion from the Egyptians, who seem in their turn to have taken both in great measure from India. Says Elphinstone: “It is impossible not to be struck with the identity of the topics discussed by the Hindu philosophers with those which engaged the attention of the same class in ancient Greece, and with the similarity between the doctrines of schools subsisting in regions of the earth so remote from each other.”[230]

Here we find the doctrines of the eternity of matter, the derivation of all souls from God and their return to Him, the doctrine of atoms and a whole system similar to that of Pythagoras. The Greek philosopher taught that intermediate between God and mankind are a host of aerial beings who exercise various influences on the condition of mankind and the affairs of the world. Enfield[231] and Stanley[232] say that Pythagoras learned his doctrine from the Magi or Oriental philosophers.

Max Müller says that Zarathustra and his followers, the Zoroastrians, had been settled in India before they immigrated into Persia. “That the Zoroastrians and their ancestors started from India during the Vaidik period, can be proved as distinctly as that the inhabitants of Massilia started from Greece.... Many of the gods of the Zoroastrians come out ... as mere reflections and deflections of the primitive and authentic gods of Veda.”[233]

The Hindus say that when their four immortal Vedas, named Rig, Yajur, Sáma, and Atharva, were originally given to man by Brahma, there was no disease or sin; but when mankind fell away from this virtuous and happy state, life was shortened and disease introduced. Brahma, in his compassion for the sufferings of mankind, then gave a second class of sacred books, the Upavédas; one of these, named Ayur-Veda, treats of the prevention and cure of diseases. Some say this work really came from Siva; it is the sacred medical authority of the Hindus, and is of the highest antiquity. It was originally of great length, but Brahma in mercy to mankind shortened it. Fragments now only remain, and these in the works of commentators. Two divisions treat of surgery. 1st, Salya treats of the surgery of the removal of foreign bodies, pus, and the dead child from the uterus; of healing wounds caused by knives, etc.; of bandaging, operations, blistering, and the treatment of abscesses and inflammations. 2nd, Sálákya treats of diseases of the eyes, ears, mouth, and nose. 3rd, Káyachikitsá describes diseases affecting the whole body, as fevers, dysentery, etc. This section may be considered as constituting the practice of medicine. 4th, Bhutavidya deals with the art of restoring the deranged faculties of the mind produced by demoniacal possession, as by the anger of the gods, devils, giants, or spirits of dead men. They can only be removed by prayers, medicines, ablution, and offerings to the offended deity. 5th, Kaumárabhritya comprises the treatment of infants and such diseases as in them were caused by the displeasure of demons. 6th, Agadatantra is concerned with the administration of antidotes. 7th, Rasáyanatantra treats of the medicines proper for restoring youth, beauty, and happiness; it embraced chemistry or alchemy, and its intention was to discover the universal medicine. 8th, Vájíkaranatantra deals with the best means of increasing the human race: an illusory research, which, like the search for the elixir of life, has even in modern times occupied the attention of physicians. The sacred Ayur-Veda contained a description of the structure of the human body as learned from dissection, and a complete system of preventive and curative medicine.

In the Shastres (Charaka, Susruta), we learn that the Ashwins, or offspring of the Sun (Surja), were the physicians of the gods; they wrote books on medicine, and wrought wonderful cures. When the fifth head of Brahma was cut off by Bayraba, it was united again by the Ashwins, so skilled were they in surgery. They also cured the wounds which the gods received in the battle with the giants. They healed also the paralysed arm of Indra. When mankind became wicked, and consequently diseased, Bharadwaja went to Indra in heaven to acquire a knowledge of medicine, and the thousand-eyed god taught him the healing art. With this knowledge the sage Bharadwaja returned to earth, and taught the Rishis the principles he had acquired. So the sages learned to distinguish diseases and the medicines suitable for their cure; they lived to a very great age, writing books called by their own names. Charaka became the instructor of practitioners upon earth, and his is the most ancient and famous work on Hindu medicine. Charaka, whom we may term the Hindu Hippocrates, flourished at Benares, probably about B.C. 320. The most celebrated and ancient collection of Hindu laws and precepts is that which is known as “the Code of Menu,” or “Institutes of Menu.” It is probably the oldest and most sacred Sanskrit work after the Veda and its Sutras, and presents us with a faithful picture of the customs and institutions of the Hindus.

The Code of Menu lays it down that diseases are the consequences of sinful acts in previous states of existence. “Men of evil manners receive an alteration of form, some through evil (deeds) committed (by them) in this life, some also through (acts) formerly committed. A thief of gold (receives) the disease of bad nails; a drinker of intoxicating liquor (the disease of) black teeth; a slayer of a Brahman, consumption; he who violates the couch of the Guru, a skin disease; a slanderer, a foul-smelling nose; a false informer, a foul-smelling mouth; a stealer of grain, the loss of a limb, and one who mixes (grain) a superfluity (of limbs); one who takes food, dyspepsia; a thief of the voice, dumbness; a thief of clothes, leprosy; a horse-thief, lameness; a stealer of a lamp would (in the next birth) become blind; an extinguisher (of a lamp), one-eyed; by (committing) injury (one would get) a condition of disease; by not (committing) injury, the condition of not being diseased. Thus, according to the difference in their acts, (men who are) blamed by the good are born dull, dumb, blind, and deformed in appearance. Regularly, then, penance should be practised for purification, since those whose sins have not (thus) been done away with are (re)born with (these) disgraceful marks attached.”[234]

Physicians are referred to several times in the Ordinances of Menu. In Lect. iv. 179 we are advised that “we should never have a dispute with a physician.” We are to avoid eating the “food of a physician and hunter, if a cruel man,” etc. (Lect. iv. 212). “The food of a physician is pus” (Ibid. 220). In Lect. ix. 284, “A fine (is set) for all physicians treating (a case) incorrectly: in (the case of creatures) not human (this is) the first, but in (the case of) human beings the medium (fine).”[235]

The Brahmans believed there was a remedy for every disease, in consequence of which they made a very careful examination of the vegetable kingdom, and so discovered a great number of medicines. If a medicine were efficacious in curing the patient, they invariably supposed it was due to the sanctity of the individual, and the divine pleasure which endowed him with it. It is therefore exceedingly difficult to obtain information, as it is believed that the medicine would lose its effect if the secret of the cure were divulged to others. From these selfish motives, the knowledge of the properties of many valuable remedies have been lost. Dr. Wise says, according to the Brahmans, there are nine secrets which should not be revealed to any one: these are the age of a person; his wealth; family occurrences; his bad actions, or those which reflect shame or dishonour upon him; his relations with his wife; his prayers to his tutelar gods; his charities; and the virtues of nostrums, the ingredients of which are known to him.

Yet priests, says Baas, from the Brahman caste, and the sub-castes, the Vaisya and Vaidya, officiated for a long time as teachers of medicine and as physicians. The Vaidyas, as the higher of the two sub-castes, included the physicians proper; while the Vaisyas, or lower caste, furnished nurses.[238]

When Buddhism passed into modern Hinduism (750-1000 A.D.) the rules of caste became stricter, and the old fetters were reimposed, and the Brahmans returned to their ancient principles which forbade them to contaminate themselves with blood or morbid matter; they withdrew from all practice of medicine, and left it entirely to the Vaidyas. After a time these also shrank from touching dead bodies. Then public hospitals were abolished when Buddhism fell. The Mohammedan conquests which began about 1000 A.D. introduced foreign practitioners of physic, who derived their knowledge from Arabic translations of Sanskrit medical classics and monopolised the patronage of the Mohammedan aristocracy.[239]

The only remains of the Buddhist hospitals now existing are the various institutions for animals, supported principally by the Jains, a sort of Protestants against Brahmanism.[240]

The Mohammedan medical practitioners were called “Hukeems,” who followed the principles of Arabian medicine derived from Greek sources. As a rule these practitioners only attended on nobles and chiefs. There is no evidence even that the Mohammedan invaders employed medical men for their armies.[241]

Dr. Benjamin Heyne, in his Tracts on India, says,[242]—

“The medical works of the Hindus are neither to be regarded as miraculous productions of wisdom, nor as repositories of nonsense. Their practical principles, as far as I can judge, are very similar to our own; and even their theories may be reconciled with ours, if we make allowance for their ignorance of anatomy, and the imperfections of their physiological speculations.”

In surgery they attained to high proficiency, and our modern surgeons have even been able to borrow from them the operation of rhinoplasty.[243]

Concerning the medicinal properties of minerals (stones and metals), plants, animal substances, and the chemical analysis and decomposition of these, we have also learned much that is extremely valuable from the Hindus. Their Materia Medica is so important, and has played so large a part in Western medical science, that we cannot afford to despise it, though the Hindus have contributed so little to the study of natural science.[244] Veterinary medicine, so far as the diseases of horses and elephants are concerned, has received special attention from the Hindus.

Charaka counsels youths who desire to study medicine to “seek a teacher whose precepts are sound and whose practical skill is generally approved, who is clever, dexterous, upright, and blameless; who knows also how to use his hands, has the requisite appliances, and all his senses about him; is confident with simple cases, and sure of his treatment in difficult ones; of genuine learning, unaffected, not morose or passionate, patient and kind to his pupils.” The pupils should spring from a family of doctors, and should have lost none of their limbs and none of their senses. “They are to be taught to be chaste and temperate, to speak the truth, to obey their teacher in all things, and to wear a beard.” They are advised to read medical treatises, attend to the personal instruction of their teacher, and to associate with other doctors. When the doctor visits his patient he should wear good clothes, incline his head, be thoughtful but of firm bearing, and observe all possible respect. Once within the house, word, thought, and attention should be directed to nothing else than the examination of the patient and all that concerns his case. He must not be a boaster. “Many recoil even from a man of skill if he loves to boast.” As medicine is difficult to learn, the doctor must practise carefully and incessantly. He must seek every opportunity for conversation with a colleague. This will remove doubts, if he have them, and fortify his opinion.

When an operation is decided on, a fortunate moment, says Dr. Wise, is to be selected, and the Brahmans and the surgeons are to be “propitiated” with gifts. The operating room is to be clean and well lighted, milk, oil, herbs, hot and cold water are to be at hand, and strong attendants to hold the patient. The knife should be wet with water before being used. The sky must be clear, and the time should be near the new moon. The surgeon must be strong and a rapid operator, and he must neither perspire, shake, nor make exclamations. The palms of the hands and soles of the feet, vessels, tendons, joints, and bones are to be avoided. During the operation, care must be taken to keep a fire burning in the patient’s room, on which sweet-scented substances are to be burnt, in order to prevent devils entering the patient by the wound made by the surgeon. After the operation holy water is to be sprinkled on the sufferer, and prayer addressed to Brahma. The bandages are to remain till the third day, and clean ones substituted.[245]

Susruta was the son of Visámitra, a contemporary of Rama, and was chosen by Dhanwantari, who was the Hindu Æsculapius, to abridge the Ayur-Veda for the cure of diseases and the preservation of the health, so that it might be more easily committed to memory. Susruta’s book is still preserved, and after Charaka’s it is the oldest book on medicine which the Hindus possess. Surgery was considered by Susruta to be “the first and best of the medical sciences; less liable than any other to the fallacies of conjectural and inferential practice; pure in itself, perpetual in its applicability; the worthy produce of heaven, and certain source of fame.”

Wise says,[246] “Dhanwantari asked his pupils, On what shall I first lecture? They answered, On surgery; because formerly there were no diseases among the gods, and wounds were the first injuries which required treatment. Besides, the practice of surgery is more respected, as affording immediate relief, and is connected with the practice of medicine; although the latter has no connection with surgery.” This was agreed to; and we find the explanation of the eight parts of Ayur-Veda, in six books of Susruta, as follows:—

1st. Surgery (Sútra Sthána), in which is considered the origin of medicine; the rules of teaching, the duty of practitioners, the selection and uses of instruments and medicines, the influence of the weather on health, and the practice to be followed after surgical operations. Then follows the description of the diseases of the humours and surgical diseases; the restoration of defective ears and noses; and the removal of extraneous substances which have entered the body; the different stages of inflammation, with their treatment; different forms of wounds and ulcers, and the regimen of patients labouring under surgical diseases; the description of good and bad diet; of prognosis; the kind of messengers to be employed by the sick; and of diseases produced by the deranged actions of the senses, and of incurable diseases. Then follows the preparations required for accompanying a rajah in war, the duty of practitioners, the difference of climates, the different classes of medicines according to their sensible qualities, a description of the fluids, and of the different preparations, and articles of food. These subjects are treated of in thirty-six chapters.

2nd. Nosology (Nidána Sthána). The description and diagnosis of diseases produced by vitiated humous, or derangements of blood, bile, wind, and phlegm; the symptoms and causes of rheumatic diseases, of piles, of stone, fistula-in-ano, leprosy, diabetes, gonorrhœa, and ascites; the symptoms of unnatural presentations in midwifery, large internal abscesses, erysipelas, scrofula, hydrocele, venereal diseases, and diseases of the mouth. These subjects are considered in sixteen chapters.

3rd. Anatomy (Saríra Sthána), or structure of the body. The description of the soul, and the elementary parts of the body; of puberty; of conception; of the growth of the different parts of the body; of bleeding; of the treatment of pregnancy, and of infants. This division has ten chapters.

4th. Therapeutics (Chikitsa Sthána), in which the exhibition of medicines, the history of inflammations, the treatment of fractures, rheumatic diseases, piles, fistula-in-ano, leprosy, diabetes, and dropsy are given; the manner of extracting the child in unusual positions, the remedies for restoring health and strength, and for prolonging life; the means of preventing diseases; the use of clysters, and of errhines, and the use of the smoke of different substances. These are considered in forty chapters.

5th. Toxicology (Kalpa Sthána). The means of distinguishing poisoned food, and descriptions of different mineral, vegetable, and animal poisons, with their antidotes, is given under this head. This division is treated of in eight chapters.

6th. The supplementary section, Locales (Uttara Sthána), includes various local diseases; as those of the eye, nose, ears and head, with their treatment; the symptoms and treatment of fever, and its varieties; dysentery, consumption; gulma; diseases of the heart; jaundice; discharges of blood, and fainting. This is followed by the treatment of intoxication, of cough, hiccough, asthma, hoarseness of voice, worms, stercoraceous vomiting, cholera, dyspepsia, and dysuria. It also treats of madness, epilepsy, apoplexy; the different tastes of substances, with their effects; the means of retaining health, and the different opinions of practitioners regarding the humours. These subjects are treated in sixty-six chapters.

According to Susruta a pupil had to be initiated into the Science of Medicine. “A medical man should initiate a pupil who is either a Brahmana, Kshatriya, or Vaishya, the members of whose body are sound, of an amiable disposition, active, well-conducted, mild, healthy, vigorous, talented, courageous, of a retentive memory, good judgment and rank, whose tooth-ends, tongue, and lips are small, whose eyes, nose, and mouth are straight, of a pleasant mind, talk, and behaviour, and able to bear fatigue; other such should not be initiated.”

Many ceremonies follow; an altar is to be erected having four angles in some conspicuous direction, which is to be washed with infusion of cow-dung and spread with kúsa grass; precious stones and rice are to be scattered upon it, and a fire is to be kindled with a number of precious woods, an oblation of ghee is to be made, and the mystic words Bhúr Bhuvah Svar and Om are to be said. “After this hail each divinity (Brahma, Agni, Dhanvantari, Prajápati, Asvins, and Indra) and each Sage (the Rishis), and make the pupil do the same.”

Stenzler and others have thought it possible that Susruta borrowed his system of medicine largely from the Greeks, and they say that so far as chronology is affected by it there would be nothing surprising in the circumstance. But Weber asserts[247] that no grounds whatever exist for this supposition; on the contrary, there is much to tell against such an idea. None of the contemporaries of Susruta has a name with a foreign sound, and the cultivation of medicine is assigned by Susruta and other writers to the city of Benares. The weights and measures to be employed by the physician are those of the eastern provinces, which never came into close contact with the Greeks, and it was first in these parts where medicine received its special cultivation.

In the general treatment of disease, the Hindus paid great attention to diet, so as to promote the just balance of the elements and humours, as they considered that the generality of diseases are produced by derangements in the humours. Many of their statements on dietetics show a keen observation. If management of diet failed to cure the disorder, the patient was directed to abstain from food altogether for a time. Should this also fail, recourse was had to ejecting the corrupted humours by emetics, purgatives, or bleeding. Even the healthy were advised to take an emetic once a fortnight, a purgative once a month, and to be bled twice a year at the change of the seasons. The Hindus observed the “critical days” which have long been recognised by physicians everywhere. Pythagoras says the Egyptians observed them, and Hippocrates employed the term κρασις when the humoral pathology was in vogue. The Hindus thought that all diseases divide naturally into two classes of the sthenic and asthenic types. In the one there was excess, in the other deficiency of excitement. Health consists in a happy medium. All the Asiatic nations hold this opinion. Their remedies consequently were stimulating or cooling, as the type of the malady demanded. Pepper, bitters, and purgatives were stimulants. Stomachics, as chiraitá, paun mixed with lime, bathing and cold were cooling remedies.[248]

The sages of antiquity have handed down to us the qualities which constitute a good physician. He must be strictly truthful, and of the greatest sobriety and decorum; he must have no dealings with any women but his own wife; he must be a man of sense and benevolence, of a charitable heart, and of a calm temper, constantly studying how to do good. Such a man is a good physician if, in addition to this, he constantly endeavours to improve his mind by the study of good books. He is not to be peevish with an irritable patient; he must be courageous and hopeful to the last day of his patient’s life; always frank, communicative, and impartial, he is yet to be rigid in seeing that his orders are carried out.

Hindu physicians make their prognosis a strong point in their practice; there are, they say, certain signs which to the experienced eye enable the doctor to prognosticate the favourable or fatal termination of a disorder. And in the first place a good deal is to be learned from the messenger who summons him to the patient, and so he notes his appearance, his dress, his manner of speaking; he notes the time of day and other circumstances, as these are all considered to have an influence on the result of the illness. It is considered unfavourable if many people follow each other to call the doctor. If the messenger sees a man arrive riding on an ass, or if he has a stick, string, or fruit in his hand, if he is dressed in red, black, or net clothes, if he sneezes, is deformed, agitated, crying, or scratching himself,—all these are bad signs. Not less so is it unfavourable when the physician is called at noonday or midnight, when he has his face turned towards the south, when he is eating, or when he is asleep or fatigued.[249]

When the doctor arrives at the bedside, it is an unfavourable sign if the patient rubs one hand against another, scratches his back, or constantly moves his head. There are eight most severe forms of disease—the nervous class, tetanus and paralysis; leprosy; piles, fistula-in-ano, stone; unnatural presentations in labour; and dropsy of the abdomen. These are cured with great difficulty, say the Hindus.

It is a good sign when the patient’s voice remains unaltered, when he awakes from sleep without starting, when he remains cool after food, and when he does not forget his god, but is prayerful and resigned.

“When the messenger finds the physician sitting in a clean place, with his face towards the east, and the messenger has in his hands a water-pot full of water, with an umbrella, they are favourable signs.”

“In Ceylon it is affirmed by the Shastree Brahmans that the Science of Medicine was communicated by Măhă Brăhma to the Brăhma Dăkshă Prajapatí; by Prajapatí it was communicated to the Aswins (the physicians of heaven): the two Aswins communicated it to Satora, the chief of the gods inhabiting the six lower heavens, by whom it was communicated to the nine sages, mentioned, on their going to him with one accord to seek a remedy for the evils brought upon mankind by their iniquities; they communicated it to the King of Casi (Benares), whose descendants caused it to be committed to writing.”[250]

Arrianus, in his history of Alexander’s expedition to India, says that “speckled snakes of a wonderful size and swiftness” are found in that country, and that “The Grecian physicians found no remedy against the bite of these snakes; but the Indians cured those who happened to fall under that misfortune; for which reason, Nearchus tells us, Alexander having all the most skilful Indians about his person, caused proclamation to be made throughout the camp that whoever was bit by one of these snakes, should forthwith repair to the royal pavilion for cure. These physicians also cure other diseases; but as they have a very temperate clime, the inhabitants are not subject to many. However, if any among them feel themselves much indisposed, they apply themselves to their sophists, who by wonderful, and even more than human means, cure whatever will admit of it.”[251]

Strabo speaks of the Hindu philosophers or sages, and the physicians. “Of the Garmanes, the most honourable,” he says, “are the Hylobii, who live in the forests, and subsist on leaves and wild fruits; they are clothed with garments made of the bark of trees, and abstain from commerce with women and from wine. The kings hold communication with them by messengers concerning the causes of things, and through them worship and supplicate the Divinity. Second in honour to the Hylobii are the physicians, for they apply philosophy to the study of the nature of man. They are of frugal habits, but do not live in the fields, and subsist upon rice and bread, which every one gives when asked, and receive them hospitably. They are able to cause persons to have a numerous offspring, and to have either male or female children, by means of charms. They cure diseases by diet, rather than by medicinal remedies. Among the latter, the most in repute are ointments and plasters. All others they suppose partake greatly of a noxious nature.”[252] They had enchanters and diviners versed in the arts of magic, who went about the villages and towns begging.

Arrianus said of the Hindus that their women were deemed marriageable at seven years of age; but the men, not till they arrive at the age of forty.[253]

Many charms, imprecations, and other superstitious usages of ancient India are contained in the Atharva-veda-Samhitâ. This body of literature dates, according to Max Müller, from 1000 to 800 B.C. (the Mantra period).[254] In this Samhitâ a number of songs are addressed to illnesses, and the healing herbs appropriate for their cure. Sarpa-vidyá (serpent-science) possibly dealt with medical matters also.[255]

The oldest fragments (very poor ones, it must be confessed) of Hindu medical science are to be found in these relics of Vedic times.

In a work on Indian medicine called the Kalpastanum described by Dr. Heyne,[256] we read that the doctor’s apparatus of mortars, scales, etc., must be kept in a place in the wall that has been consecrated for that purpose by religious ceremonies. In the middle of the medicine room the mystic sign must be set up, with images of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva.

Many ceremonies must be gone through in the preparation of medicines; the physician must attend to the boiling of some of them himself, and the spot round the fireplace must be smeared with cow-dung by a virgin, or by the mother of sons whose husband is alive; at the same time, offerings must be made to the gods. Should any of the ceremonies be omitted, the patient will repent the neglect, for devils of all descriptions will defile the medicine and hinder its good effect. Before the patient takes his potion, the god of physic is to be worshipped in the person of his deputy, the doctor, who naturally (and for the good of the patient) is to be well rewarded for his services.

Buddhism, says Max Müller, is the frontier between ancient and modern literature in India. He gives 477 B.C. as the probable date of Buddha’s death,[257] and describes the religion of that great sage as standing in the same relation to the ancient Brahmanism of the Veda as Italian to Latin, or as Protestantism to Catholicism. It is a development from Brahmanism, yet it is not the religion of India, though it has greatly influenced Hindu thought.[258]

Buddha’s religious system recognised no supreme deity; a Buddhist never really prays, he merely contemplates.[259]

Man can himself become the only god Buddha’s system finds room for. God becomes man in Brahmanism; man becomes a god in Buddhism. All existence is an evil to the Buddhist; “act” is to be got rid of as effectually as possible, for action means existence. The great end of the system is Nirvāna, or non-existence. “Of priests and clergy in our sense,” says Professor Williams, “the Buddhist religion has none.” Though there is no God, prayer is practised as a kind of charm against diseases; for malignant demons, as we might have expected, are believed by Buddhists to cause these and other evils. These Buddhist prayers are used like the Mantras of the Brahmins as charms against evils of all kinds. The Buddhists have a demon of love, anger, evil, and death, called Māra, the opponent of Buddha. He can send forth legions of evil demons like himself. Some of the precepts of Buddha are fully equal to those of the highest religions—Charity, Virtue, Patience, Fortitude, Meditation, and Knowledge. The special characteristic of Buddhism is the perfection of its tenderness and mercy towards all living creatures, even beasts of prey and noxious insects not being outside the circle of its sympathy. According to the Buddhist’s belief, all our acts ripen and go to form our Karma. The consequences of our acts must inexorably be worked out. This is Brahminical as well as Buddhistic doctrine. “In the Sábda-kalpa-druma, under the head of Karma-vipāka,” says Williams, “will be found a long catalogue of the various diseases with which men are born, as the fruit of evil deeds committed in former states of existence, and a declaration as to the number of births through which each disease will be protracted, unless, expiations be performed in the present life.”[260]

All our sufferings, our sicknesses, weaknesses, and moral depravity are simply the consequences of our actions in former bodies. When the Jews asked our Lord, “Who did sin, this man (i.e. in a former life) or his parents, that he was born blind?”[261] they evidently had in their minds the Hindu doctrine of previous existences. The principles of the Brahminic religion do not appear to have embraced any care for or attention to the needs of sick people. Involved in philosophical speculations, and the perfecting of their system of caste, the founders of the Brahminic religion had no time to bestow on such mundane matters as disease and its cure. It was not until the rise of Buddhism and the political ascendency which it acquired over Brahmanism (from about 250 B.C. to A.D. 600), that public hospitals were established for man and animals in the great cities of the Buddhist princes.[262] Buddhism had a gospel for every living creature; it taught the spiritual equality of all men, whose good works, without the mediation of priests and Brahmins, would save them from future punishment. Medicine, under the fostering care of Buddhism, was studied as any other science, and the noblest outcome of the movement was the establishment of public hospitals. A great seat of medical learning was established at Benares, and Asoka, King of Behar or Putra, published fourteen Edicts, one of which devised a system of medical care for man and beast.[263]

Amongst the legends of Gotama Buddha is the history of Jíwaka, which is of great interest to the historians of medicine, as it illustrates the state of the science in India at that early age. The following account is abbreviated from Mr. Spence Hardy’s translation of Singhalese MSS.[264]

Jíwaka was a physician who administered medicine to Budha. He learned his profession in this way. When he was seven or eight years of age, he ran away from his parents, resolving that he would learn some science; so he considered the character of the eighteen sciences and the sixty-four arts, and determined that he would study the art of medicine, that he might be called doctor, and be respected, and attain to eminence. So he went to the collegiate city of Taksalá[265] and applied to a learned professor to take him into his school of medicine. The professor asked him what fees he had brought with him. Jíwaka said he had no money, but he was willing to work. The professor liked the manner of the lad, and agreed to teach him, though from other pupils he received a thousand masurans. At this moment the throne of Sekra trembled, as Jíwaka had been acquiring merit, and was soon to administer medicine to Gotama Budha. The déwa resolved that as he was to become the physician of Budha, he would himself be his teacher; and for this purpose he came to the earth, entered the mouth of the professor, and inspired him with the wisdom he needed to teach his pupil in the most excellent manner.

Jíwaka made rapid progress, and soon discovered that he could treat the patients more successfully than his master. He learned in seven years as much about diseases as any other teacher could have taught him in sixteen. Then Jíwaka asked his preceptor when his education would be finished; and the old man, wishing to test his knowledge, told him to take a basket and go outside the city for the space of sixteen miles, and collect all the roots, barks, leaves, and fruits which were useless in the art of medicine. Jíwaka did as he was instructed, and after four days he returned and informed the professor that he had met with no substance which in some way or other was not useful in medicine; there was no such thing on earth. Now when the teacher heard this reply, he said, there was no one who could teach the pupil any more, and Sekra departed from his mouth. He knew that his pupil had been taught by divine wisdom. Then Jíwaka journeyed to Sákétu, where he found a woman who had a violent pain in her head, which for seven years many learned physicians had vainly tried to cure. He offered to cure her, but she said, “If all the learned doctors had failed to relieve her, it was useless to seek the aid of a little child.” Jíwaka replied that “Science is neither old nor young. I will not go away till the headache is entirely cured.” Then the woman said, “My son, give me relief for a single day: it is seven years since I was able to sleep.” So Jíwaka poured a little medicine into her nose, which went into her brain, and behold, all her headache was gone; and the lady and her relations each gave the physician 4,000 níla-karshas, with chariots, and other, and other gifts in abundance. After this he cured the king of a fistula-in-ano, for which he received a royal reward. There was in Rajagaha a rich nobleman who had a pain in his head like the cutting of a knife. None of his physicians could cure him, so Jíwaka took the noble into a room, sat behind him, and taking a very sharp instrument, opened his skull; and setting aside the three sutures, he seized the two worms which were gnawing his brain with a forceps, and extracted them entire. He then closed up the wound in such a manner that not a single hair was displaced. There was a nobleman in Benares who had twisted one of his intestines into a knot, so that he was not able to pass any solid food. Crowds of physicians came to see him, but none of them dare undertake his case; but Jíwaka said at once he could cure him. He bound his patient to a pillar that he might not move, covered his face, and taking a sharp instrument, without the noble’s being aware of what was going on, ripped open the abdomen, took out his intestines, undid the knot, and replaced them in a proper manner. He then rubbed ointment on the place, put the patient to bed, fed him on rice-gruel, and in three days he was as well as ever. Of course he had an immense fee. After performing other wonderful cures, Jíwaka administered medicine to Budha in the perfume of a flower. The narrative must be given in the words of the MS.: “In this way was the medicine given. On a certain occasion when Budha was sick, it was thought that if he were to take a little opening medicine he would be better; and accordingly Ananda went to Jíwaka to inform him that the teacher of the world was indisposed. On receiving this information, Jíwaka, who thought that the time to which he had so long looked forward had arrived, went to the wihára, as Budha was at that time residing near Rajagaha. After making the proper inquiries, he discovered that there were three causes of the disease; and in order to remove them he prepared three lotus flowers, into each of which he put a quantity of medicine. The flowers were given to Budha at three separate times, and by smelling at them his bowels were moved ten times by each flower. By means of the first flower the first cause of disease passed away, and by the other two the second and third causes were removed.”

This legend is instructive in many ways. It shows us that 500 B.C. there were colleges in which medicine was taught, and that by special professors of the art, who received large fees from their pupils and kept them under instruction for many years. We find that the profession of medicine brought great honours and rewards to its adepts. We learn that trephining the skull for cerebral diseases was in use, and that the operation of opening the abdomen for bowel obstructions was understood. It reveals the important fact that already the whole of nature had been ransacked for remedies, and that everything was more or less useful to the physician. The great efficacy which the ancients attributed to perfumes is exhibited in the lotus story, which reminds us that when Democritus was aware that he was dying, he desired to prolong his life beyond the festival of Ceres, and accomplished his wish by inhaling the vapour of hot bread.

Galen’s description of the pulse in disease is very suggestive of the ancient Sanskrit treatises on the pulse; so much is this the case, it would seem, that either the Hindu physician must have copied from the Roman, or the Roman from the Indian. He speaks of the sharp-tailed or myuri, fainting myuri, recurrent myuri, the goat-leap or dorcadissans, a term derived from the animal dorcas, which, in jumping aloft, stops in the air, and then unexpectedly takes another and a swifter spring than the former. But if after the diastole it recur, and before a complete systole take place, strike the finger a second time; such a pulse is called a reverberating one, or dicrotos, from its beating twice. There is also the undulatory and vermicular pulse, the spasmodic and vibratory, the ant-like or formicans, from its resemblance to the ant (formica), on account of its smallness and kind of motion; there is the hectic, the serrated, the fat and the lean kind.

Medical etiquette amongst the Hindus was not overlooked.

“A physician who desires success in his practice, his own profit, a good name, and finally a place in heaven, must pray daily for all living creatures, first of the Brahmans and of the cow. The physician should wear his hair short, keep his nails clean[266] and cut close, and wear a sweet-smelling dress. He should never leave the house without a cane or umbrella; he should avoid especially any familiarity with women. Let his speech be soft, clear, pleasant. Transactions in the house should not be bruited abroad.”[267]

The dissection and examination of the dead subject is not practised in India, it is contrary to the tenets of the Brahmans; such knowledge of anatomy as the Hindus possess must therefore be little else than conjecture, formed by the study of the bodies of animals. Ainslie says[268] that the Rajah of Tanjore, in the year 1826, was a learned and enlightened prince, who was anxious to study the structure of the human body, but was too rigid a Hindu to satisfy his curiosity at the expense of his principles, so he ordered a complete skeleton made of ivory to be sent to him from England. Sir William Jones states that in a fragment of the Ayur-Veda he was surprised to find an account of the internal structure of the human frame.[269]

The ancient Hindus must have possessed considerable knowledge of surgery. In a commentary on Susruta made by Ubhatta, a Cashmirian, which may be as old, Ainslie thinks, as the twelfth century, many valuable surgical definitions are distinctly detailed. According to the best authorities, says Ainslie, surgery was of eight kinds: chedhana, cutting or excision; lekhana, or scarification and inoculation; vyadhana, puncturing; eshyam, probing or sounding; aharya, extraction of solid bodies; visravana, extracting fluids (by leeches and bleeding); sevana, or sewing; and bhedana, division or excision.[270]

Twelve species of leeches are enumerated in some of the Sanskrit works on surgery, six of which are poisonous and six useful medicinally.[271]

Dissection was practised in the most ancient times; but now there is the greatest prejudice against touching the dead body, and modern practitioners of Hindu medicine, where they do not follow the ancient authors, are in a worse condition than they were, on account of the present ignorance of anatomy. All the sages are alleged to have learned their knowledge of medicine from the works of Charaka and Susruta. Those who were taught by Charaka became physicians; those who were followers of Susruta, surgeons. Charaka’s classification and plan of treating diseases are considered superior to those of Susruta, but the latter is prized for his anatomy and surgery. Babhata compiled a compendium of medicine from the works of these great masters of the art, and some three hundred years ago a compilation was made from all the most celebrated works on medicine; this was called Baboprukasa. It is clear and well arranged, and explains the difficulties and obscurities of the ancient Shastres. This was compiled as a text-book for practitioners, and is in high repute with them. Dr. Wise explains the ancient methods of dissecting the human body as given in Hindu text-books.

“The dejections are to be removed, and the body washed and placed in a framework of wood, properly secured by means of grass, hemp, sugar-cane reeds, corn-straw, pea-stalks, or the like. The body is then to be placed in still water, in a moving stream, where it will not be injured by birds, fish, or animals. It is to remain for seven days and nights in the water, when it will have become putrid. It is then to be removed to a convenient situation, and with a brush, made of reeds, hair, or bamboo bark, the surface of the body is to be removed so as to exhibit the skin, flesh, etc., which are each in their turn to be observed before being removed. In this manner, the different corporeal parts of the body will be exhibited; but the life of the body is too ethereal to be distinguished by this process, and its properties must therefore be learned with the assistance of the explanations of holy medical practitioners, and prayers offered up to God, by which, conjoined with the exercise of the reasoning and understanding faculties, conviction will be certainly obtained.”[272]

The Hindus have been great observers of the natural qualities of plants, though they have contributed little or nothing to the study of botany. “The materia medica of the Hindus,” says Hunter,[273] “embraces a vast collection of drugs belonging to the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, many of which have been adopted by European physicians.” They were ingenious pharmacists, and some of their directions for the administration of medicines are most elaborate. They paid scrupulous attention to hygiene, regimen, and diet.

Hindu treatises on medicine inform the physician that man’s constitution is occasioned by three dispositions born with him—wadum, pittum, and chestum, or wind, bile, and slime,—and it is the physician’s business to ascertain which of these predominate in any individual. These we may call the three morbiferous diatheses. The pulse is to be felt, not merely at the wrist as we feel it, but in ten different parts of the body. Some of the descriptions of the pulse are very curious. Sometimes, they say, it beats as a frog jumps, or as a creeping rain-worm, or like the motion of a child in a cradle hung in chains; at other times it is like a fowl when running or as a peacock when strutting, and so on.

The Yantras or surgical implements known to Susruta were, according to Professor H. H. Wilson, one hundred and one, and are thus described by him in his most interesting paper on the “Medical and Surgical Sciences of the Hindus.”[274]

The instruments were classed as Swastikas, Sandanśas, Tálayantras, Nádiyantras, Salákás, and Upayantras.

The Swastikas are twenty-four in number; they are metallic, about eighteen inches long, and fancifully shaped like the beaks of birds, etc. They were a sort of pincers or forceps.

The Sandanśas were a kind of tongs for removing extraneous substances from the soft parts.

The Tálayantras were similar, and were used for bringing away foreign bodies from the ears, nose, etc.

The Nádiyantras were tubular instruments, of which there were twenty sorts. They were similar to our catheters, syringes, etc. The Salákás were rods and sounds, etc. Of these there were twenty-eight kinds; some were for removing nasal polypi, so common and so troublesome in India. The Upayantras were such dressings as cloth, twine, leather, etc. The first, best, and most important of all implements is declared to be the Hand. The Man’dalágra was a round pointed lancet; the Vriddhipatra a broad knife; the Arddhadhárás are perhaps knives with one edge; the Trikúrchaka may be a sort of canular trochar, with a guarded point. The Vrihimukha is a perforating instrument. The Kutháriká was probably a bistoury. The Vadiśa is a hooked or curved instrument for extracting foreign substances, and the Dantaśanku appears to be an instrument for drawing teeth. The Ará and Karapatra are saws for cutting through bones. The Eshan’i is a blunt straight instrument six or eight inches long—a sort of probe, in fact. The Súchi is a needle. Then the Hindu surgeon had substitutes such as rough leaves that draw blood, pith of trees, skin, leeches, caustics, etc. It is evident that the surgeon of ancient India was not inefficiently armed.

The student of surgery had many curious contrivances for acquiring manual dexterity. He practised the art of making incisions on wax spread out on a board; on flowers, bulbs, and gourds. Skins or bladders filled with paste and mire were used for the same purpose. He practised scarification on the fresh hides of animals from which the hair has not been removed; puncturing, or lancing the vessels of dead animals; extraction on the cavities of the same, or fruits with large seeds; sutures were made on skin and leather, and ligatures and bandages on well-made models of the human limbs. Fourteen kinds of bandages are described by Vágbhatta. The cautery was applied by hot seeds, burning substances, or heated plates and probes. Frequently this treatment was used for headaches and for liver and spleen disorders. It was chiefly employed, however, as with the Greeks, for averting bleeding by searing the mouths of the divided vessels. The early Hindus could extract stone from the bladder, and even the fœtus from the uterus. They must have been bold operators, many of their operations being actually hazardous. It is a subject deserving of inquiry how they lost the information and skill which they once possessed in so high a degree. The books of medicine and surgery to which reference has been made are undoubtedly most ancient, and it must be remembered were considered as inspired writings. Professor Wilson says: “We must infer that the existing sentiments of the Hindus are of modern date, growing out of an altered state of society, and unsupported by their oldest and most authentic civil and moral, as well as medical institutes.”

Many surgical operations which we consider triumphs of our modern practice were invented by the ancient Hindus. They were skilled in amputation, in lithotomy (as we have seen), in abdominal and uterine operations; they operated for hernia, fistula, and piles, set broken bones, and had specialists in rhinoplasty or operations for restoring lost ears and noses. It was a common custom in India for a jealous husband to mutilate the nose of his suspected wife, so that surgeons had opportunities to practise this branch of their art. The ancient Indian surgeons invented an operation for neuralgia which was very similar to the modern division of the fifth nerve above the eyebrow. Veterinary science was understood, and ancient treatises exist, says Hunter,[275] on the diseases of elephants and horses.

The best era of Hindu medicine was from 250 B.C. to 750 A.D. Its chief centres were found in such Buddhist monastic universities as that of Nalanda, near Gayá.[276] Hunter thinks it probable that the ancient Brahmans may have derived their anatomical knowledge from the dissection of the sacrifices; but there is no doubt that the true schools of Indian medicine were the great public hospitals which were established by Buddhist princes like Asoka, famous for his rock edicts, B.C. 251-249. Amongst the fourteen injunctions inscribed by this enlightened sovereign, the first was the prohibition of the slaughter of animals for food or sacrifice, and the second was the provision of a system of medical aid for men and animals and of plantations and wells on the roadside.[277]

Probably King Asoka’s were the first real hospitals for general diseases anywhere established, as the institutions connected with the Greek temples were not exactly hospitals in our sense of the term; they were more like camps round a mineral spring or spa. The Buddhist physicians would have in these merciful institutions abundant opportunity for the continuous study of disease.

Whatever may have been the condition of ancient Hindu anatomy and surgery, in modern times both have now fallen to the lowest point. Dislocated joints are replaced and fractured limbs set by a class of men similar to our bone-setters which are found in all nations. Certain of the Mohammedan doctors—Hakeems—sometimes bleed and couch for cataract in a clumsy manner. The village Kabiráj knows but a few sentences of Sanskrit texts, but he has “a by no means contemptible pharmacopœia,” says Hunter. The rest consists of spells, fasts, and quackery.

Physicians (Vitians or Vydias) being Sudras are not allowed to read the sacred medical writings (Vedas); these are guarded with religious awe by the Brahmins; they are permitted, however, access to certain commentaries upon the professional sacred books.

When we reflect on the high position which the science and art of the Hindus had attained in very ancient times, it is surprising that we have apparently learned little or nothing from them in connection with the healing art. Max Müller believes that there was an ancient indigenous Hindu astronomy and an ancient indigenous Hindu geometry. Probably the first attempt at solving the problem of the squaring of the circle was suggested, he thinks, by the problem in the Sutras how to construct a square altar that should be of exactly the same magnitude as a round altar. It is scarcely conceivable that so patient and shrewd a people as the Hindus, a people at once so observant and so profoundly speculative, should not have kept pace with the other enlightened nations of the world in the study of medicine and surgery. The vegetation of India is so rich in medicinal herbs that its Materia Medica could hardly be equalled in any other country; so that both by intellect and by location the Hindus should be amongst the foremost professors of the art of medicine. On the contrary, however, the West has everywhere to instruct the East in the medical sciences; and the young Brahmins who flock to the medical schools and universities of Europe find that they have everything to learn from us in this direction. Is this an evidence of arrested development, a retrogression in civilization due to conservatism and a paralysis of the power to keep pace with the world’s advance consequent on the influences of religion and custom? Probably it is. All the medicine of the Hindus is empiricism; their systems exclude anatomy and surgery, without which, as Prof. H. H. Wilson observes,[278] “the whole system must be defective.... We can easily imagine that these were not likely to have been much cultivated in Hindustan, and that local disadvantages and religious prejudices might have proved very serious impediments to their acquirement.”

As compared with other ancient nations, Egypt, Chaldæa, Greece, and Rome, we are at considerable disadvantage in the attempt to discover what was known and practised of the healing arts in the remoter ages. We have no papyri like the “Book of the Dead” or the great medical papyrus of Ebers; we have no inscriptions on such ancient monuments as Mesopotamia has preserved for us; we have no Sanskrit treatises to be compared for their antiquity and scientific interest with those which have come down to us from ancient Greece.

Max Müller says[279] that “few Sanskrit MSS. in India are older than 1000 after Christ, nor is there any evidence that the art of writing was known in India much before the beginning of Buddhism, or the very end of the ancient Vedic literature.”

Then, again, the Hindu treatises on medical subjects, whether fables or facts, have hitherto been little noticed by Sanskrit scholars.[280]

The subject is not of general interest, and a man would need to be not only a perfect Sanskrit scholar, but a physician as well, who should attempt such a task as the translation of these treatises in any useful manner. Although ancient India has little to show us in the way of actual written documents and inscriptions, it must not be supposed for a moment that she is deficient in ancient poetry and other works which have been preserved through the ages by the marvellously developed memory of her Brahmins and religious teachers. The ancient Vedic hymns, the Brâhmanas, and probably the Sutras, were handed down from before 1000 B.C. by oral tradition. Every, the minutest precaution was taken that not a word, not a letter, not an accent even should be omitted or altered; and Max Müller tells us “this was a sacred duty, the neglect of which entailed social degradation, and the most minute rules were laid down as to the mnemonic system that had to be followed.”

The people of India believe that small-pox is under the control of “the goddess Mata,” in whose honour temples abound and fairs are held, where thousands of women and children attend with offerings. The declivities of most of the numerous conical hills present either a reddened stone or temple devoted to “Mata,” with most probably an attendant Brahmin priest. Nearly every village has its goddess of small-pox in the immediate locality, and in many places a large piece of ground is esteemed holy and dedicated to “Mata.” The people do not pray to escape the affliction, unless in seasons when it occurs with more than ordinary violence. They do, however, petition for a mild visitation. But even the loss of an eye does not appear to be viewed as a very serious calamity! “Is there not another eye sufficient for all our purposes?” questioned one of these stoical philosophers. “If it were the leg or hand, it would be different, but an eye is immaterial.”[281]

“The small-pox goddess stands with two uplifted crooked daggers, threatening to strike on the right and left. Before her are a band of executors of her vengeance. Two of them wear red grinning masks, carry black shields, and brandish naked scimitars. White lines, like rays, issue from the bodies of the others, to indicate infection. On the right there is a group of men with spotted bodies, afflicted with the malady; bells are hung at their cinctures, and a few of them wave in their hands black feathers. They are preceded by musicians with drums, who are supplicating the pity of the furious deity. Behind the goddess, on the right, there advances a bevy of smiling young women, who are carrying gracefully on their heads baskets with thanksgiving-offerings, in gratitude for their lives and their beauty having been spared. There is, besides, a little boy with a bell at his girdle, who seems to be conveying something from the right arm of the goddess. This action may possibly be emblematic of inoculation.”[282]

Another small-pox deity of India described by Mr. Dubois, a missionary,[283] is Mah-ry-Umma, who is supposed to incarnate herself in the disease. The natives, when vaccination was first introduced, objected to the practice for fear lest the goddess should be offended, as to prevent the small-pox would imply an objection to her becoming incarnate amongst them. The difficulty was overcome by the suggestion that the vaccination was a mild form of disease by which the goddess had chosen to visit her votaries, so that she might be worshipped with equal respect.

“Even Siva is worshipped as a stone, especially that Siva who will afflict a child with epileptic fits, and then, speaking by its voice, will announce that he is Parchânana, the Five-faced, and is punishing the child for insulting his image.”[284]

Surgeon-General Sir W. J. Moore, in an article on “The Origin and Progress of Hospitals in India,”[285] says that we may form a very good opinion of the condition of the whole of India in ancient times by recalling what was the state of medical relief in most of the native States previous to the institution of medical relief and sanitation in British districts.

“Recently, in the Native States, there might be witnessed disease proceeding unchecked and uninterfered with, to a degree which certainly would not be allowed at present in civilized Europe. And especially was this evident in surgical disease, as illustrated by the following extract from an official document:[286]—

“‘In former reports I have mentioned the extreme ignorance displayed by native “hukeems” or “vaids” of surgical principles. As a rule, all surgical disease is either wrongly treated, or let alone until treatment is unavailable by these uneducated practitioners. Their errors of omission and commission are not so easily ascertained in their medical, as in their surgical, practice. But in the latter, there is a glaring ignorance, not only from things requisite not being attempted, but from things unnecessary being performed, leading to the serious injury and often to the death of the patient. Thus, during my last tour, I saw at one village, an open scrofulous sore of the neck with the carotid artery isolated, and apparently on the point of giving way. At another village I witnessed an advanced cancer rapidly killing a man. In another place a woman had remained for days with a dislocated jaw, which was easily put in situ. Other forms of dislocation and fracture neglected are almost daily sights. At Bikaneer I amputated the leg of a man who eight months before fell from a camel; the bones of the leg protruding through the skin of the heel, and the foot being driven half-way up the front of the leg, in which position it had been permitted to heal! At the same place a woman was rapidly sinking from the results of extensive sinus of the breast, following abscess, and which only required free incisions for the restoration of health. I also saw a man dying of strangulated hernia, without the slightest idea of or attempt at relief on the part of the native practitioners. And so on, throughout almost the whole range of surgery, I have from time to time witnessed the most lamentable results from the malpractices, or from the absence of practice on the part of the Native Doctors.’

“As mentioned in the above extract, the errors of omission and commission are not so easily ascertained in medical as in surgical cases. But the great majority of those stricken by disease, such as inflammations and fevers, derived as little benefit from medicine as did the Romans when, according to Pliny, physicians were banished from the Imperial City during many years. For few indeed of the higher class and comparatively better educated ‘hukeems’ or ‘vaids’ would minister to the poor who were unable to pay their fees; and of the populations of India the great majority are and always were poor. Steeped in continually augmenting superstition and ignorance, if the poor received medical aid at all, it was from the hands of the equally ignorant and superstitious village ‘Kabiraj,’ who, unlike their more noble Aryan predecessors, did not even ‘draw physic from the fields,’ although they may have used a charm, such as a peacock’s feather tied round the affected part! If the poor got well, they got well; and as most diseases have a tendency to terminate in health, many did recover. If a fatal termination resulted, it was attributed to nusseeb or destiny, or the gods were blamed. Insane persons, if harmless, were allowed to ramble about the streets; if violent, they were chained in the most convenient place. The jails of the Native States were also in an unparalleled unsanitary condition, for no medical aid whatever was provided; as Coleridge said of Coldbath Fields, these jails might have given His Satanic Majesty a hint for improving Hades. Fatalism combined with ignorance, and a consequent utter unbelief in any measures of sanitation, resulted in the absence of all measures of precaution during epidemics of contagious disease. During the prevalence of small-pox, children might be seen by scores, in every stage of the disease, playing or lying about the streets. During an epidemic of cholera, not one precautionary measure was ever adopted—except by the wild Bheels, who invariably moved, leaving their villages for a time for the open jungle; thus forestalling the most approved method of preventing cholera adopted for British troops, viz., marching away from the infected area.

“Not only were there no hospitals proper, or contagious hospitals, or asylums for the insane, but neither were there any asylums for lepers. Regarding the latter, difference of opinion would appear to have existed among scientific investigators, then as now, as to whether leprosy is a contagious disease or not. Then as now, in some parts of the country, lepers were permitted to live among the people; in other localities they were thrust out from the towns or villages, generally forming a little colony on the adjoining plain. This expulsion of lepers from the towns and villages, then as now, was not so much the result of fear of contagion, as the Brahminical dread of contact with impurity. Then as now, these outcasts lived miserably in mud or grass huts, obtaining food by begging. When tired of life, or when being old or disabled their relatives were tired of keeping them, they often submitted to ‘sumajh’ or burial alive. But they more frequently threatened to perform ‘sumajh’ with the view of extracting alms from the charitable, who were induced to believe that the death of the leper would be credited to them, unless they bought off the sacrifice. ‘Sumajh,’ or leper burial alive, has been practised comparatively recently in more than one of the Native States.

“The Native principalities are now much more advanced in most respects than they were only a few years back. By coming into contact with the progressive civilization of adjoining British districts, the Governments of Native States were forced to advance; for they felt their existence would be imperilled. And this advance was most materially assisted by the successful endeavours made by the Indian Government to secure the better education of the young Indian princes and nobles. The Imperial Government also, and especially under Lord Mayo, enunciated care for the sick as one of the most urgent duties of the feudatory rulers of India. Owing to such measures, aided by the personal influence of the Political, and the assistance of the Medical Officers attached to the Native Courts, a hospital or dispensary has, amongst other features of civilization, been established at every large capital; while in some States ramifications of such central establishments have rendered the people almost as well off, in the matter of medical relief, as those in British territory. As it will not be necessary to refer again, except incidentally, to the Native States, I may here remark that all the medical institutions are supported at the cost of the Durbar or Government of each State. They are, as a rule, superintended by the European Medical Officer attached to the Political Residency, aided by native assistants.

“Although the recent condition of the Native States represents what formerly prevailed all over Hindustan, it must not be understood that the people were devoid of charity; only the charity of the well-to-do classes did not take the form of medical relief. In the absence of a qualified medical profession recognised by the State, the confidence felt in the physic of the ‘vaids’ and ‘hukeems’ was something akin to the faith of Byron, who without any such excuse designated medicine as ‘the destructive art of healing.’ Moreover, the organization of hospitals was not understood, and the necessary discipline of such establishments was foreign to the habits and ideas of the people. The poor (who now throng the hospitals of India), having had no experience of the advantages of such institutions, would probably not have resorted thereto had hospitals and dispensaries been opened under native control. So suspicious were the people on the first opening of a hospital in one of the Native States, that sweetmeats, of which they are very fond, were ordered to be given daily to each patient, as an encouragement to attend! So in former times the charitable preferred spending their money in sinking wells, in constructing serais or rest-houses for travellers, in endowing temples, and in feeding the poor, particularly Brahmins. In this manner, enormous sums have been disbursed and are still expended, especially in food for the destitute. This laudable charity of the Indians, although often confined to their own caste people, and to occasions of family festival, is one of the reasons why it has never been thought necessary to establish any system of poor-law relief in British India. Of late years native charity has been often directed towards building and endowing medical institutions, and many Indian gentlemen have given most liberally for such purposes.”

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V. MEDICINE IN CHINA, TARTARY, AND JAPAN

Origin of Chinese Culture.—Shamanism.—Disease-Demons.—Taoism.—Medicine Gods.—Mediums.—Anatomy and Physiology of the Chinese.—Surgery.—No Hospitals in China.—Chinese Medicines.—Filial Piety.—Charms and Sacred Signs.—Medicine in Thibet, Tartary, and Japan.

Chief amongst the Mongolian peoples are the Chinese. Prof. Max Müller argues that the Chinese, the Thibetans, the Japanese, Coreans, and the Ural-Altaic or Turanian nations are in the matter of religion closely related.

Chinese culture has recently been declared by Professor Terrien de la Couperie, François Lenormant, and Sayce to be of Accadian origin. Hieratic Accadian has been identified with the first five hundred Chinese characters, and it is believed by Professor de la Couperie that the Chinese entered north-western China from Susiana, about the twenty-third century before Christ.[287]

In the Finno-Tartarian magical mythology, we have not only the link which connects the religion of heathen Finland with that of Accadian Chaldæa, but we discover what is of more importance in tracing the origin of the magic and medicine of the old civilizations of the world from a primitive and coarse cosmogony, such as we have examined in so many savage peoples.

As it is impossible to separate the ancient medical belief of a people from its religious conceptions, if we admit Prof. Max Müller’s theory, we must also hold that it embraces the medical notions of these peoples. And so we find that one of the striking characteristics of the Mongolic religions is an extensive magic and sorcery—Shamanism. Practically the gods and heroes of the poetry of these peoples are sorcerers, and their worshippers value above everything their magical powers. Taoism, a Chinese religion of great antiquity and respect, involves an implicit faith in sorcery; and the Chinese and Mongolians have degenerated Buddhism into Shamanism.[288]

Confucianism is the chief religion of the Chinese. It is simply a development of the worship of ancestors, which was the aboriginal religion of the country. All the Chinese are ancestor-worshippers, to whatever other native religion they may belong.[289]

The pure Confucian is a true Agnostic.

Although Chinese civilization is without doubt extremely ancient, we are unable to study it as we study that of Egypt or Chaldæa, on account of the absence of monuments or a literature older than a few centuries before Christ, which would give us a reliable history.

The Chinese attribute to Huang-ti (B.C. 2637) a work on medicine, which is still extant, entitled Nuy-kin, which is probably not older than the Christian era. They also attribute to the Emperor Chin-nung (B.C. 2699) a catalogue of medicinal herbs.[290]

The demon theory of disease universally obtains throughout the Chinese empire. All bodily and mental disorders spring either from the air or spirits. They are sent by the gods as punishments for sins committed in a previous state of existence. In a country where Buddhism is largely believed, it is natural to suppose that there is little sympathy with the suffering and afflicted. One might offend the gods by getting cured, or delay the working out of the effects of the expiatory suffering. Archdeacon Grey found a grievously afflicted monk in a monastery in the White Cloud mountains. He desired to take him to the Canton Medical Missionary Hospital; but the abbot took him aside, and begged him not to do so, as the sufferer had doubtless in a former state of existence been guilty of some heinous crime, for which the gods were then making him pay the well-merited penalty.[291]

Nevertheless, when sick, the Chinese often have recourse to some deity, who is supposed to have caused the illness. If the patient dies, they do not blame the god, but they withhold the thank-offering which is customary in case of recovery. The death is declared to be in accordance with the “reckoning of Heaven.” If the patient recovers, the deity of the disease gets the credit. Prayers and ceremonies are made use of to induce the “destroying” demon to banish the baneful influences under his control. Sudden illness is frequently ascribed to the evil influence of one of the seventy-two malignant spirits or gods. In very urgent cases an “arrow” is obtained from an idol in the temple. This “arrow” is about two feet long, and has a single written word, “Command,” upon it. If the patient recovers, it must be returned to the temple with a present; if he dies, an offering of mock-money is made. The “arrow” is considered as the warrant of the god for the disease-spirit to depart.[292]

In L’ien-chow, in the province of Kwang-si, if a man hits his foot against a stone, and afterwards falls sick, it is at once recognised that there was a demon in the stone; and the man’s friends accordingly go to the place where the accident happened, and endeavour to appease the demon with offerings of rice, wine, incense, and worship. After this the patient recovers.[293]

Sometimes it is difficult to find out what particular god has been offended. Then some member of his family asks, with a stick of burning incense in his hand, that the offended deity will make known by the mouth of the patient how he has been offended. The disease is sometimes, as amongst savage nations, ascribed to the spirit of a deceased person. The god of medicine is invited to the sick man’s house in cases where malignant sores or inflamed eyes are prevalent. Ten men sometimes become “security” for the sick person. After offerings and ceremonies, the names of the ten are written upon paper, and burned before the idol. When a patient is likely to die, the last resort is to employ Tauist priests to pray for him, and then the following ceremony is performed:—A bamboo, eight or ten feet long, with green leaves at the end, is provided, and a coat belonging to the sick man is suspended with a mirror in the place where the head of the wearer of the coat would be. The priest repeats his incantations, to induce the sick man’s spirit to enter the coat, as it is supposed that the patient’s spirit is leaving the body or has been hovering near it. The incantations are to induce the spirit to enter the coat, so that the owner may wear both together. Sometimes the family will hire a Tauist priest to climb a ladder of knives, and perform ceremonies for the recovery of the sick man. This is thought to have a great effect on the disease-spirits.[294]

The Emperor Fuh-Hi, who invented the eight diagrams, was the first physician whose name has come down to modern times. He is one of the Sang Huông, or “Three Emperors,” and is the deity of doctors.

I Kuang Tāi Uông is the god of surgery. The people say he was a foreigner, of the Loochoo Islands, who came to the middle kingdom and practised surgery. As he was deaf whilst in the flesh, his worshippers consider he is thus afflicted now that he is a deity, so they pray into his ear, as well as offer him incense and candles.[295]

Ling Chui Nä is the goddess of midwifery and children. If children are sick, their parents employ Tauist priests in some of her temples to perform a ceremony for their cure.[296]

Iöh Uong Chû Sü is the god of medicine. It is said that he was a distinguished physician who was deified after his death. He is now generally worshipped by dealers in drugs and by their assistants. On the third day of the third month, they make a feast in his honour, and burn candles and incense before his image at his temple. Practising physicians do not usually take any part in these proceedings.[297]

The Chinese have goddesses of small-pox and measles, which are extremely popular divinities. Should it thunder after the pustules of small-pox have appeared, a drum is beaten, to prevent them breaking. On the fourteenth day ceremonies are performed before the goddess, to induce her to cause the pustules to dry up.[298]

Mediums are often employed to prescribe for the sick. They behave precisely as our spiritualists do, and pretend that the divinity invoked casts himself into the medium for the time being, and dictates the medicine which the sick person requires.[299]

In the “Texts of Táoism”[300] we are informed that “In the body there are seven precious organs, which serve to enrich the state, to give rest to the people, and to make the vital force of the system full to overflowing. Hence we have the heart, the kidneys, the breath, the blood, the brains, the semen, and the marrow. These are the seven precious organs. They are not dispersed when the body returns (to the dust). Refined by the use of the Great Medicine, the myriad spirits all ascend among the Immortals.”

Anatomy and physiology have made no progress in China, because there has never been any dissection of the body. The only books on the subject in the Chinese language are Jesuit translations of European works. Briefly stated, Chinese ideas on the subject are as follows:—In the human body there are six chief organs in which “moisture” is located—the heart, liver, two kidneys, spleen, and lungs. There are six others in which “warmth” abides—the small and large intestine, the gall bladder, the stomach, and the urinary apparatus. They reckon 365 bones in the whole body, eight in the male and six in the female skull, twelve ribs in men and fourteen in women. They term the bile the seat of courage; the spleen, the seat of reason; the liver, the granary of the soul; the stomach, the resting-place of the mind.

A familiar drug in Chinese materia medica, which is sold in all the drug-shops, is the Kou-Kouo, or bean of St. Ignatius. The horny vegetable is used, after bruising and macerating, in cold water, to which it communicates a strong bitter taste. “This water,” says M. Huc,[301] “taken inwardly, modifies the heat of the blood, and extinguishes internal inflammation. It is an excellent specific for all sorts of wounds and contusions.... The veterinary doctors also apply it with great success to the internal diseases of cattle and sheep. In the north of China we have often witnessed the salutary effects of the Kou-Kouo.”

This bean is the seed of Strychnos Ignatia, and the plant is indigenous to the Philippine Islands. The action and uses of ignatia are identical, says Stillé, with those of nux vomica.[302]

The medical profession is a very crowded one in China, as it is perfectly free to any who choose to practise it. No diploma or certificate of any kind is necessary in order to practise medicine in China. The majority of the regular practitioners, if such they can be called, are men who have failed to pass their examinations as literates. There is one, and apparently only one, check on quackery. The Chinese have a special place in their second hell which is reserved for ignorant physicians who will persist in doctoring sick folk. In the fourth hell are found physicians who have used bad drugs, and in the seventh hell are tortured those who have taken human bones from cemeteries to make into medicines. In the very lowest hell are physicians who have misused their art for criminal purposes. These evil persons are ceaselessly gored by sows.[303]

Naturally, the sciences of anatomy and physiology are entirely neglected by these self-constituted native doctors. All the learning they require is the ability to copy out prescriptions from a medical book. Dr. Gould, a physician of long experience in China, tells us that the native physician is depicted in Chinese primers as a person between the heathen priest and the fortune-teller—his profession is looked upon as a combination of superstition and legerdemain.[304]

The court physicians at Pekin are of a much superior class, and are compelled to pass examinations before their appointment.

Astrology, charms, amulets, and characts enter largely into Chinese medical practice. The priests keep bundles of paper charms ready for emergencies. They are supposed to know which of the different methods of using them are most appropriate to each case. Masks are used by children at certain times to ward off the deity of small-pox. The masks are very ugly, as the deity is believed only to afflict pretty children.[305]

“Isaac Vossius,” says Southey, “commended the skill of the Chinese physicians in finding out by their touch, not only that the body is diseased (which, he said, was all that our practitioners knew by it), but also from what cause or what part the sickness proceeds. To make ourselves masters of this skill, he would have us explore the nature of men’s pulses, till they became as well known and as familiar to us as a harp or lute is to the players thereon; it not being enough for them to know that there is something amiss which spoils the tune, but they must also know what string it is which causes that fault.”[306]

Surgery has never made much progress in China; the Chinese have too much respect for the dead to employ corpses for anatomical purposes, and they have the greatest unwillingness to draw blood or perform any kind of operation on the living. Their ideas of the structure of the human frame are therefore purely fanciful. “The distinctive Chinese surgical invention is acupuncture, or the insertion of fine needles of hardened silver or gold for an inch or more (with a twisting motion) into the seats of pain or inflammation.”[307] Rheumatism and gout are thus treated, and 367 points are specified where needles may be inserted without injury to great vessels or vital organs.

Dentistry and ophthalmic surgery are practised by specialists.

There are no hospitals; the Chinese consider it would be a neglect of the duty which they owe to their relatives to send them when sick to such institutions. Chinese doctors often receive a fixed salary so long as their patient remains in good health; when he falls sick, the pay is stopped till he gets well. The doctor must ask his patient no questions, nor does the patient volunteer any information about his case. Having felt the sick man’s pulse, looked at his tongue, and otherwise observed him, he is supposed to have completed his diagnosis, and must prescribe accordingly. Some of the Chinese prescriptions are very costly; precious stones and jewels are often powdered up with musk and made into pills, which are considered specifics for small-pox and fevers. Another remedy is Kiuchiu, a bitter wine made of spirit, aloes, myrrh, frankincense, and saffron, which is said to be a powerful tonic. The profession of medicine is hereditary, receiving very few recruits from outside; hence its complete stagnation.[308]

One of the industries of the Foo-Chow beggars is the rearing of snakes, which are used by the druggists to prepare their medicines. Snake-wine is used as a febrifuge, and snake’s flesh is considered a nutritious diet for invalids. Skulls, paws, horns, and skins of many animals, as bears, bats, crocodiles and tigers, are used in medicine. For fever patients physicians prescribe a decoction of scorpions, while dysentery is treated by acupuncture of the tongue. Pigeon’s dung is the favourite medicine for women in pregnancy; and the water in which cockles have been boiled is prescribed for skin diseases, and for persons who are recovering from small-pox. Rat’s flesh is eaten as a hair-restorer, and human milk is given to aged persons as a restorative. Crab’s liver administered in decoction of pine shavings is used in a form of skin disease. In Gordon Cumming’s Wanderings in China, from which many of the above facts are taken, it is stated that “dried red-spotted lizard, silk-worm moth, parasite of mulberry trees, asses’s glue, tops of hartshorn, black-lead, white-lead, stalactite, asbestos, tortoise-shell, stag-horns and bones, dog’s flesh and ferns are all recommended as tonics.” Burnt straw, oyster shells, gold and silver leaf, and the bones and tusks of dragons are said to be astringent. These dragons’ bones are the fossil remains of extinct animals. Some of the medicines of standard Chinese works are selected purely on account of their loathsomeness, such as the ordure of all sorts of animals, from man down to goats, rabbits, and silk-worm, dried leeches, human blood, dried toads, shed skins of snakes, centipedes, tiger’s blood, and other horrors innumerable hold a conspicuous place in the Chinese pharmacopœia. Nor, says Gordon Cumming, are these the worst. The physicians say that some diseases are incurable save by a broth made of human flesh cut from the arm or thigh of a living son or daughter of the patient.[309]

The same author tells us that a young girl who so mutilated herself to save her mother’s life was specially commended in the Official Gazette of Peking for July 5th, 1870.

Medicines prepared from the eyes and vitals of the dead are supposed to be efficacious. Leprosy is believed to be curable by drinking the blood of a healthy infant. Dr. Macarthy and Staff-Surgeon Rennie were present at an execution in Peking, when they saw the executioner soak up the blood of the decapitated criminal with large balls of pith, which he preserved. These are dried and sold to the druggists under the name of “shue-man-tou” (blood-bread), which is prescribed for a disease called “chong-cheng,” which Dr. Rennie supposed to be pulmonary consumption.[310]

The Times says (October 10th, 1892) that the character of the accusations made in the publications against Europeans has created as much astonishment amongst the foreign residents in China as it has in the West. Missionaries especially were charged—and the charges have been made frequently during the past thirty years—with bewitching women and children by means of drugs, enticing them to some secret place, and there killing them for the purpose of taking out their hearts and eyes. Dr. Macgowan, a gentleman who has lived for many years in China, has published a statement showing that from the point of view of Chinese medicine these accusations are far from preposterous. It is one of the medical superstitions of China that various portions of the human frame and all its secretions possess therapeutic properties. He refers to a popular voluminous Materia Medica—the only authoritative work of the kind in the Chinese language—which gives thirty-seven anthropophagous remedies of native medicine. Human blood taken into the system from another is believed to strengthen it; and Dr. Macgowan mentions the case of an English lady, now dead, who devoted her fortune and life to the education of girls in Ningpo, who was supposed by the natives to extract the blood of her pupils for this purpose. Human muscles are supposed to be a good medicament in consumption, and cases are constantly recorded of children who mutilate themselves to administer their flesh to sick parents.

Never, says Dr. Macgowan, has filial piety exhibited its zeal in this manner more than at the present time. Imperial decrees published in the Pekin Gazette, often authorising honorary portals to be erected in honour of men, and particularly women, for these flesh offerings, afford no indication of the extent to which it is carried, for only people of wealth and influence can obtain such a recognition of the merit of filial devotion. It is very common among the comparatively lowly, but more frequent among the literati. A literary graduate now in his own service, finding the operation of snipping a piece of integument from his arm too painful, seized a hatchet and cut off a joint of one of his fingers, which he made into broth mixed with medicine and gave to his mother. It is essential in all such cases that the recipient should be kept in profound ignorance of the nature of the potion thus prepared, and in no case is the operation to be performed for an inferior, as by a husband for a wife, or a parent for a child. This belief in the medical virtues of part of the human body (of which a large number of instances which cannot be repeated here are given) has led to a demand from native practitioners which can sometimes only be supplied by murder. Of this, too, examples are given from official records and other publications, some of them of quite recent date.

Dr. Macgowan reminds us that men capable of these atrocities have been found in other civilized lands. He says:—

“It was in a model Occidental city, not inaptly styled the ‘Modern Athens,’ that subjects were procured for the dissecting-room through murder, at about the same amount of money as that paid in China for sets of eyes and hearts for medicine. A remedy was found which promptly suppressed that exceptional crime in the West. In China murder of this nature can also be prevented, but not speedily. Time is an indispensable factor in effecting the suppression of homicide, which is the outcome of medical superstition. That superstition is strongly intrenched in an official work, the most common book, after the classics, in the empire. So long as the concluding chapter is retained in the materia medica, it will be futile to undertake the abolition of murder for medical purposes; and so long as these abhorrent crimes prevail in China, so long will fomenters of riots against foreigners aim to make it appear that the men and women from afar are addicted to that form of murder, and thus precious lives will continue to be exposed to forfeiture.”

The most celebrated drug in Chinese Materia Medica is ginseng, the root of a species of Panax, belonging to the natural order Araliacæ. The most esteemed variety is found in Corea; an inferior kind comes from the United States, the Panax quinquefolium, and is often substituted for the real article. All the Chinese ginseng is Imperial property, and is sold at its weight in gold. The peculiar shape of the root, like the body of man—a peculiarity which it shares with mandrake and some other plants—led to its employment in cases where virile power fails, as in the aged and debilitated. Special kinds have been sold at the enormous sum of 300 to 400 dollars the ounce. Europeans have hitherto failed, says the Encyclopædia Britannica, to discover any wonderful properties in the drug. It is no doubt a remarkable instance of the doctrine of signatures (q.v.). In all cases of severe disease, debility, etc., the Chinese fly to this remedy, so that enormous quantities are used. The Hon. H. N. Shore, R.N., says that the export from New-Chang in Manchuria to the Chinese ports of this article for one year alone reached the value of £51,000. It seems to be simply a mild tonic, very much like gentian root. Some of the pharmacies are on a very large scale; six hundred and fifty various kinds of leaves are commonly kept for medicinal purposes.

When a Chinese physician is not able to procure the medicines he needs, he writes the names of the drugs he desires to employ on a piece of paper, and makes the patient swallow it; the effect is supposed to be quite as good as that of the remedy itself, and certainly in many cases it would be infinitely more pleasant to take! This custom of swallowing charms is seen again in the sick-room, some of the charms which are stuck round it being occasionally taken down, burned, and mixed with water, which the patient has to drink. Gongs are beaten and fire-crackers let off to frighten away the demons which are supposed to be tormenting the sick person.

“The superstition as to the powers of the ‘evil eye,’” says Denny,[311] “may almost be deemed fundamental to humanity, as I have yet to read of a people amongst whom it does not find some degree of credence.” In China a pregnant woman, or a man whose wife is pregnant, is called “four-eyed”; and children are guarded against being looked at by either, as it would probably cause sickness to attack them.

One of the commonest diagrams to be met with in China is the mystic svastika, or “Thor’s Hammer” 卍. It is found on the wrappers of medicines, and is accepted as the accumulation of lucky signs possessing ten thousand virtues.[312]

The physicians of Thibet, says M. Huc,[313] assign to the human body four hundred and forty diseases, neither more nor less. Lamas who practise medicine have to learn by heart the books which treat of these diseases, their symptoms, and the method of curing them. The books are a mere hotch-potch of aphorisms and recipes. The Lama doctors have less horror of blood than the Chinese, and practise bleeding and cupping. They pay great attention to the examination of a patient’s water. A thoroughly competent Lama physician must be able to diagnose the disease and treat the patient without seeing him. It is sufficient that he make a careful examination of the water. This he does not by chemical tests, as in Western nations, but by whipping it up with a wooden knife and listening to the noise made by the bubbles. A patient’s water is mute or crackling according to his state of health. Much of Chinese and Tartar medicine is mere superstition. “Yet,” says M. Huc very judiciously, “notwithstanding all this quackery, there is no doubt that they possess an infinite number of very valuable recipes, the result of long experience. It were perhaps rash to imagine that medical science has nothing to learn from the Tartar, Thibetian, and Chinese physicians, on the pretext that they are not acquainted with the structure and mechanism of the human body. They may, nevertheless, be in possession of very important secrets, which science alone, no doubt, is capable of explaining, but which, very possibly, science itself may never discover. Without being scientific, a man may very well light upon extremely scientific results.” The fact that everybody in China and Tartary can make gunpowder, while probably none of the makers can chemically explain its composition and action is a proof of this fact.

M. Huc says that every Mongol knows the name and position of all the bones which compose the frame of animals. They are exceedingly skilful anatomists, and are well acquainted with the diseases of animals, and the best means of curing them. They administer medicines to beasts by means of a cow-horn used as a funnel, and even employ enemas in their diseases. The cow-horn serves for the pipe, and a bladder fixed on the wide end acts as a pump when squeezed. They make punctures and incisions in various parts of the body of animals. Although their skill as anatomists and veterinary surgeons is so great, they have only the simplest and rudest tools wherewith to exercise this art.

“Medicine in Tartary,” says M. Huc,[314] “is exclusively practised by the Lamas. When illness attacks any one, his friends run to the nearest monastery for a Lama, whose first proceeding, upon visiting the patient, is to run his fingers over the pulse of both wrists simultaneously, as the fingers of a musician run over the strings of an instrument. The Chinese physicians feel both pulses also, but in succession. After due deliberation, the Lama pronounces his opinion as to the particular nature of the malady. According to the religious belief of the Tartars, all illness is owing to the visitation of a Tchutgour, or demon; but the expulsion of the demon is first a matter of medicine. The Lama physician next proceeds, as Lama apothecary, to give the specific befitting the case; the Tartar pharmacopœia rejecting all mineral chemistry, the Lama remedies consist entirely of vegetables pulverised, and either infused in water or made up into pills. If the Lama doctor happens not to have any medicine with him, he is by no means disconcerted; he writes the names of the remedies upon little scraps of paper, moistens the paper with his saliva, and rolls them up into pills, which the patient tosses down with the same perfect confidence as though they were genuine medicaments. To swallow the name of a remedy, or the remedy itself, say the Tartars, comes to precisely the same thing.

“The medical assault of the usurping demon being applied, the Lama next proceeds to spiritual artillery, in the form of prayers, adapted to the quality of the demon who has to be dislodged. If the patient is poor, the Tchutgour visiting him can evidently only be an inferior Tchutgour, requiring merely a brief, offhand prayer, sometimes merely an interjectional exorcism. If the patient is very poor, the Lama troubles himself with neither prayer nor pill, but goes away, recommending the friends to wait with patience until the sick patient gets better or dies, according to the decree of Hormoustha. But where the patient is rich, the possessor of large flocks, the proceedings are altogether different. First it is obvious that a devil who presumes to visit so eminent a personage must be a potent devil, one of the chiefs of the lower world; and it would not be decent for a great Tchutgour to travel like a mere sprite; the family, accordingly, are directed to prepare for him a handsome suit of clothes, a pair of rich boots, a fine horse, ready saddled and bridled, otherwise the devil will never think of going, physic or exorcise him how you may. It is even possible, indeed, that one horse will not suffice; for the demon, in very rich cases, may turn out upon inquiry to be so high and mighty a prince, that he has with him a number of courtiers and attendants, all of whom have to be provided with horses.

“Everything being arranged, the ceremony commences. The Lama and numerous co-physicians called in from his own and other adjacent monasteries, offer up prayers in the rich man’s tents for a week or a fortnight, until they perceive that the devil is gone,—that is to say, until they have exhausted all the disposable tea and sheep. If the patient recovers, it is a clear proof that the prayers have been efficaciously recited; if he dies, it is a still greater proof of the efficaciousness of the prayers, for not only is the devil gone, but the patient has transmigrated to a state far better than that he has quitted.

“The prayers recited by the Lamas for the recovery of the sick are sometimes accompanied with very dismal and alarming rites. The aunt of Tokoura, chief of an encampment in the Valley of Dark Waters, visited by M. Huc, was seized one evening with an intermittent fever. ‘I would invite the attendance of the doctor Lama,’ said Tokoura, ‘but if he finds there is a very big Tchutgour present, the expenses will ruin me.’ He waited for some days, but as his aunt grew worse and worse, he at last sent for a Lama; his anticipations were confirmed. The Lama pronounced that a demon of considerable rank was present, and that no time must be lost in expelling him. Eight other Lamas were forthwith called in, who at once set about the construction in dried herbs of a great puppet, which they entitled the Demon of Intermittent Fever, and which, when completed, they placed on its legs by means of a stick, in the patient’s tent.

“The ceremony began at eleven o’clock at night; the Lamas ranged themselves in a semicircle round the upper portion of the tent with cymbals, sea-shells, bells, tambourines, and other instruments of the noisy Tartar music. The remainder of the circle was completed by the members of the family squatting on the ground close to one another, the patient kneeling, or rather crouched on her heels, opposite the Demon of Intermittent Fever. The Lama doctor in chief had before him a large copper basin filled with millet, and some little images made of paste. The dung-fuel threw amid much smoke a fantastic and quivering light over the strange scene. Upon a given signal, the clerical orchestra executed an overture harsh enough to frighten Satan himself, the lay congregation beating time with their hands to the charivari of clanging instruments and ear-splitting voices. The diabolical concert over, the Grand Lama opened the Book of Exorcisms, which he rested on his knees. As he chanted one of the forms, he took from the basin from time to time a handful of millet, which he threw east, west, north, and south, according to the Rubric. The tones of his voice as he prayed were sometimes mournful and suppressed, sometimes vehemently loud and energetic. All of a sudden he would quit the regular cadence of prayer, and have an outburst of apparently indomitable rage, abusing the herb puppet with fierce invectives and furious gestures. The exorcism terminated, he gave a signal by stretching out his arms right and left, and the other Lamas struck up a tremendously noisy chorus in hurried, dashing tones. All the instruments were set to work, and meantime the lay congregation, having started up with one accord, ran out of the tent one after the other, and tearing round it like mad people, beat it at their hardest with sticks, yelling all the while at the pitch of their voices in a manner to make ordinary hair stand on end. Having thrice performed this demoniac round, they re-entered the tent as precipitately as they had quitted it, and resumed their seats. Then, all the others covering their faces with their hands, the Grand Lama rose and set fire to the herb figure. As soon as the flames rose he uttered a loud cry, which was repeated with interest by the rest of the company. The laity immediately arose, seized the burning figure, carried it into the plain, away from the tents, and there, as it consumed, anathematized it with all sorts of imprecations; the Lamas, meantime, squatted in the tent, tranquilly chanting their prayers in a grave, solemn tone. Upon the return of the family from their valorous expedition, the praying was exchanged for joyous felicitations. By-and-by each person provided with a lighted torch, the whole party rushed simultaneously from the tent, and formed into a procession, the laymen first, then the patient, supported on either side by a member of the family, and lastly, the nine Lamas, making night hideous with their music. In this style the patient was conducted to another tent, pursuant to the orders of the Lama, who declared she must absent herself from her own habitation for an entire month.

“After this strange treatment the malady did not return. The probability is that the Lamas, having ascertained the precise moment at which the fever-fit would recur, met it at the exact point of time by this tremendous counter-excitement and overcame it.

“Though the majority of the Lamas seek to foster the ignorant credulity of the Tartars, in order to turn it to their own profit, we have met some of them who frankly avowed that duplicity and imposture played considerable part in all their ceremonies. The superior of a Lamasery said to us one day, ‘When a person is ill the recitation of prayers is proper, for Buddha is the master of life and death; it is he who rules the transmigration of beings. To take remedies is also fitting, for the great virtue of medicinal herbs also comes to us from Buddha. That the Evil One may possess a rich person is credible; but that in order to repel the Evil One, the way is to give him dress, and a horse, and what not, this is a fiction invented by ignorant and deceiving Lamas, who desire to accumulate wealth at the expense of their brothers.’”

M. Huc describes a grand solemnity he witnessed in Tartary, when a Lama Boktè cut himself open, took out his entrails, placed them before him, and then after returning them, closed the wound while the blood flowed in every direction; yet he was apparently as well as before the operation, with the exception of extreme prostration. Good Lamas, says M. Huc, abhor such diabolical miracles; it is only those of bad character who perform them. The good priest describes several other “supernaturalisms,” as he calls them, of a similar kind, which are frequently performed by the Lamas. He sets them all down to diabolical agency.[315]

The Turanian nations have their priests of magic, says M. Maury,[316] who exercise great power over the people. He thinks this is partly due to the pains they take to look savage and imposing, but still more to the over-excited condition in which they are kept by the rites to which they have recourse; they take stimulants and probably drugs to cause hallucinations, convulsions, and dreams, for they are the dupes of their own delirium.

“Amongst all nations,” says Castrèn, “of whatever race, disease is always regarded as a possession, and as the work of a demon.”[317]

Says M. Maury: “The Baschkirs have their Shaitan-kuriazi, who expel devils, and undertake to treat the invalids regarded as possessed by means of the administration of certain remedies. This Shaitan, whose name has been borrowed from the Satan of the Christians, since the Baschkirs have come into contact with the Russians, is held by the Kalmuks to be the chief author of all our bodily sufferings. If they wish to expel him, they must resort not only to conjurations, but also to cunning. The aleyss places his offerings before the sick man, as if they were intended for the wicked spirit; it being supposed that the demon, attracted by their number or their value, will leave the body which he is tormenting in order to seize upon the new spoil. According to the Tcheremisses, the souls of the dead come to trouble the living, and in order to prevent them from doing so, they pierce the soles of the feet, and also the heart of the deceased, thinking that, being then nailed into their tomb, the dead could not possibly leave it.... The Kirghis tribes apply to their sorcerers, or Baksy, to chase away demons, and then to cure the diseases they are supposed to produce. To this end they whip the invalid until the blood comes, and then spit in his face. In their eyes every disease is a personal being. This idea is so generally received amongst the Tchuvaches also, that they firmly believe the least omission of duty is punished by some disease sent to them by Tchemen, a demon whose name is only an altered form of Shaitan. An opinion strongly resembling this is found again amongst the Tchuktchis; these savages have recourse to the strangest conjurations to free from disease; their Shamans are also subject to nervous states, which they bring on by an artificial excitement.”[318]

JAPANESE MEDICINE.

The Chinese, as early as 218 B.C., found their way amongst the Japanese doctors with medical books, dating back, it is alleged, to 2737 B.C., and the influence of Chinese medicine upon Japanese medicine has continued to be a controlling one up to the recent introduction of European medicines now in vogue. The old style of things is, according to Dr. Benjamin Howard, still followed by 30,000 out of the 41,000 physicians now practising throughout the Empire. Of the 30,000 of the old vernacular school, one of them is still on the list of the Court physicians, and maintains a high reputation. The impression throughout Europe that coloured papers, exorcisms, etc., are the basis of Chinese and Japanese medicine is erroneous. Dr. Howard has seen nearly 2,000 books by these people, covering most of the departments of medicine, but amongst which materia medica occupies the leading place. In these books are the doctrines of the successive schools, strikingly like some of those which in past centuries existed amongst our own ancestors. The successive medical colleges have always had a professor of astrology, but the solid fact remains that the materia medica has included amongst its several hundred remedies a large number of those used by ourselves, and these are not only vegetable, but animal and mineral, in the latter class mercury being prominent. Surgery became a separate branch as long since as the seventh or eighth century.[319]

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VI. THE MEDICINE OF THE PARSEES

Zoroaster and the Zend-Avesta.—The Heavenly Gift of the Healing Plants.—Ormuzd and Ahriman.—Practice of the Healing Art and its Fees.

Zoroaster, or more correctly Zarathustra, was the founder, or at least the reformer of the Magian religion, and one of the greatest teachers of the East. The date of Zoroaster is involved in obscurity, but all classical antiquity agrees that he was an historical person. Neither do we know his birthplace. Duncker gives 1000 B.C. as his period; others consider that he was possibly a contemporary of Moses. In the Zend-Avesta and the records of the Parsees he is said to have lived in the reign of Vitaçpa or Gushtap, whom most writers recognise as Darius Hystaspis. Pliny notices works of Zoroaster treating of Nature and of precious stones. He is credited with the invention of magic; and as ancient medicine was closely connected with magic, we may, in this sense, consider him as a physician. Aristotle and Eudoxus stated that he lived six thousand years before Plato. It is hopeless, however, to attempt to settle a question so involved in obscurity. The most characteristic feature of Zoroaster’s teaching is the dualistic conception of the scheme of the universe, according to which two powers—a good and an evil—are for ever contending for the mastery—Ormuzd against Ahriman. Ormuzd is of the light, and from this emanate the good spirits whose laws are executed by Izeds, who are angels and archangels.

Ahriman is of the darkness, and from this emanate Daêvas, powers by whom mankind are led to their destruction—evil powers, false gods, devils. From these Daêvas proceed all the evil which is in the world; they are agents of that higher evil principle Druj, or falsehood and deception, which is called Ahriman, the spirit enemy. These Daêvas send to men, and are the causes of all diseases, which can only be cured by the good spirits. Man belongs either to Ormuzd or to Ahriman according to his deeds. If he offers sacrifice to Ormuzd and the gods, and helps them by good thoughts, good deeds, and spreads life over the world and opposes Ahriman by destroying evil, then he is a man of Asha, who drives away fiends and diseases by spells. He who does the contrary to this is a Dravant,—“demon,” a foe of Asha. The man of Ormuzd will have a seat near him in heaven.[320]

According to the Zend-Avesta Thrita was the first physician who drove back death and disease. Ormuzd (Ahura Mazda) brought him down from heaven ten thousand healing plants which had grown around the tree of eternal life, which is the white Haoma (the Indian Soma), or Gaokerena, which grows in the middle of the sea, Vouru-kasha. These are the Haomas, says Darmesteter.[321]

One is the yellow, or earthly Haoma, and is the king of healing-plants; the other, or white, is that which, on the day of resurrection, will make men immortal. Thrita was one of the first priests of Haoma, the life and health-giving plant, and thus he obtained his skill in medicine. Darmesteter says that Thrita was originally the same as Thraêtaona of the Rig-Veda.[322]

“We see that Thraêtaona fulfilled the same functions as Thrita. According to Hamza he was the inventor of medicine. The Tavids (formulas of exorcism) against sickness are inscribed with his name, and we find in the Avesta itself the Fravashi of Thraêtaona invoked ‘against itch, hot fever, humours, cold fever, vâvareshi; against the plagues created by the serpent.’ We learn from this passage that disease was understood as coming from the serpent; in other words, that it was considered a sort of poisoning, and this is the reason why the killer of the serpent was invoked to act against it. Thus Thrita Thraêtaona had a double right to the title of the first of the healers, both as a priest of Haoma and as the conqueror of the serpent.”

Ormuzd (Ahura Mazda) said that Thrita “asked for a source of remedies—he obtained it from Khshathia-Vaivya”—to withstand the diseases and infection which Angra-Mainyu had created by his witchcraft. As Ahriman had created ten thousand diseases, so Ormuzd gave mankind the same number of healing plants. This idea is firmly fixed in the minds of every one of us to this day: for every disease there must of necessity somewhere be a remedy, and that usually with the common people is supposed to be a plant. The Soma is the king of the healing plants in India and that also came down from heaven. “Whilst coming down from heaven the plants said, ‘He will never suffer any wound the mortal whom we touch.’”[323]

Ormuzd, having given man the healing plants, said: “To thee, O Sickness, I say, avaunt! To thee, O Death, I say, avaunt! To thee, O Pain, I say, avaunt! To thee, O Fever, I say, avaunt! To thee, O Disease, I say, avaunt!”[324]

In the Vendîdâd (Fargard vii. a)[325] it is demanded, “If a worshipper of Mazda want to practise the art of healing, on whom shall he first prove his skill? On worshippers of Mazda or on worshippers of the Daêvas?”

Ahura Mazda answered: “On worshippers of the Daêvas shall he first prove himself, rather than on worshippers of Mazda. If he treat with the knife a worshipper of the Daêvas, and he die; if he treat with the knife a second worshipper of the Daêvas, and he die; if he treat with the knife for the third time a worshipper of the Daêvas, and he die, he is unfit to practise the art of healing for ever and ever. Let him therefore never attend any worshipper of Mazda; let him never treat with the knife any worshipper of Mazda, nor wound him with the knife. If he shall ever attend any worshipper of Mazda; if he shall ever treat with the knife any worshipper of Mazda, and wound him with the knife, he shall pay for it the same penalty as is paid for wilful murder. If he treat with the knife a worshipper of the Daêvas, and he recover; if he treat with the knife a second worshipper of the Daêvas, and he recover; if for the third time he treat with the knife a worshipper of the Daêvas, and he recover, then he is fit to practise the art of healing for ever and ever. He may henceforth at his will attend worshippers of Mazda; he may at his will treat with the knife worshippers of Mazda, and heal them with the knife.”

Naturally, the rising surgeons would seek their clinical material amongst the heretics.

We learn from the Zend-Avesta that the doctrine of Zoroaster teaches that not only real death makes one unclean, but partial death also. The demon claims as his property everything which goes out of the body of man, and that because it is dead. The breath which leaves the mouth is unclean, so that fire, which is sacred, must not be blown with it. Nail parings and cuttings of the hair are unclean, and unless protected by spells are likely to become the weapons of the demons. Whatever altered the body in its nature was demon’s work. On this principle the menstruation of women causes their uncleanness. The menses are sent by Ahriman; the woman is possessed by a demon while they last; she has to be kept apart; she cannot even receive food from hand to hand; she may not eat much lest she feed the demon. So utterly unclean is a woman who has borne a dead child that she is not allowed to drink water unless in danger of death. Logic compelled that a sick man should be treated as one possessed. Sickness was sent by Ahriman, and is to be cured by washings and spells. The most powerful therefore of all medical treatment is magic. It was always more highly esteemed by the faithful than treatment by drugs and the lancet.[326] Hair and nails, which having been cut off have at once become the property of Ahriman, may be withdrawn from his power by prayer, and by being deposited in the earth in consecrated circles, which, being drawn round them, intrench them against the fiend.[327]

In the Zend-Avesta it is laid down that a woman who has been just delivered of a child is unclean. When delivered of a dead child, she must drink gômêz. Says Darmesteter:[328] “So utterly unclean is she, that she is not even allowed to drink water, unless she is in danger of death; and even then, as the sacred element has been defiled, she is liable to the penalty of a Perhôtanu. It appears from modern customs that the treatment is the same when the child is born alive; the reason of which is that, in any case, during the first three days after delivery she is in danger of death. A great fire is lighted to keep away the fiends, who use then their utmost efforts to kill her and her child. She is unclean only because the death-fiend is in her.”

The Saddar 16 says: “When there is a pregnant woman in a house, one must take care that there be fire continually in it; when the child is brought forth, one must burn a candle, or, better still, a fire, for three days and three nights, to render the Dêvs and Drugs unable to harm the child; for there is great danger during those three days and nights after the birth of the child.”

A table of physician’s fees is given in the Vendîdâd. The healer is to attend a priest and get him well for his blessing; the master of a house is to pay the value of a cheap ox for the same service; but the lord of a province is to pay the value of a chariot and four. The wife of the master of a house pays the value of a she-ass for her healing, but the wife of the lord of a province pays the value of a she-camel.

It declared that, “If several healers offered themselves together, O Spitama Zarathustra! namely, one who heals with the knife, one who heals with herbs, and one who heals with the holy word (i.e. by spells), it is this one who will best drive away sickness from the faithful.”

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Book III

GREEK MEDICINE.

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I. THE MEDICINE OF THE GREEKS BEFORE THE TIME OF HIPPOCRATES

Apollo, the God of Medicine.—Cheiron.—Æsculapius.—Artemis.—Dionysus.—Ammon.—Hermes. —Prometheus.—Melampus.—Medicine of Homer.—- Temples of Æsculapius.—The Early Ionic Philosophers.—Empedocles.—School of Crotona.—The Pythagoreans.—Grecian Theory of Diseases.—School of Cos.—The Asclepiads.—The Aliptæ.

GODS OF MEDICINE.

The origin of Greek medicine is intermixed with the Hellenic mythology. We must begin, not with ÆSCULAPIUS (ASCLEPIOS), but with the sun itself. APOLLO (PÆAN), as the god who visits men with plagues and epidemics, was also the god who wards off evil and affords help to men. He was constantly referred to as “the Healer,” as Alexicacus, the averter of ills. He is the saviour from epidemics, and the pæan was sung in his honour (Iliad, I. 473, XXII. 391).

APOLLO promoted the health and well-being of man, and was the god of prolific power, the trainer of youth, and thus he was the chief deity of healing. As the god of light and purity he was truly the health-god; and as light penetrates the darkness, he was the god of divination and the patron of prophecy, acting chiefly through women when in a state of ecstasy. Homer says that Pæan[329] was the physician of the Olympian gods (Iliad, V. 401, 899).

Next we find Cheiron, the wise and just centaur (Iliad, XI. 831), who had been instructed by Apollo and Artemis, and was famous for his skill in medicine. He was the master and instructor of the most celebrated heroes of Greek story, and he taught the art of healing to ÆSCULAPIUS (B.C. 1250). This god of medicine was said to be the son of Apollo. Pausanius[330] explains the allegory thus: “If Asclepius is the air—indispensable to the health of man and beast, yet Apollo is the sun, and rightly is he called the father of Asclepius, for the sun, by his yearly course, makes the air wholesome.”

In the Homeric poems Æsculapius is not a divinity, but merely a human being. Homer, however, calls all those who practise the art of healing descendants of Pæan; his healing god is Apollo, and never Æsculapius.

Legend tells that Æsculapius was the son of Apollo by Coronis, who was killed by Artemis for unfaithfulness, and her body was about to be burnt on the pyre, when Apollo snatched the boy out of the flames and handed him over to the centaur Cheiron, who taught him how to cure all diseases. Pindar tells the story of his instruction in the art of medicine:—

“The rescued child he gave to share Magnesian Centaur’s fostering care; And learn of him the soothing art That wards from man diseases’ dart. Of those whom nature made to feel Corroding ulcers gnaw their frame; Or stones far hurled, or glittering steel, All to the great physician came. By summer’s heat or winter’s cold Oppressed, of him they sought relief. Each deadly pang his skill controlled, And found a balm for every grief. On some the force of charmed strains he tried, To some the medicated draught applied; Some limbs he placed the amulets around, Some from the trunk he cut, and made the patient sound.”[331]

It was believed that he was even able to restore the dead to life. According to one tradition, Æsculapius was once shut up in the house of Glaucus, whom he was to cure, and while he was absorbed in thought there came a serpent, which twined round his staff, and which he killed. Then he saw another serpent, which came carrying in its mouth a herb, with which it recalled to life the one that had been killed; and the physician henceforth made use of the same herb to restore dead men to life, the popular belief, even in these early times, evidently being that what would cure serpents would be equally efficacious for men. We may therefore consider the snake-entwined staff of the healing god as the symbol of the early faith in the efficacy of experiments on animals, though in this instance the experiment was on a dead one.

Æsculapius was only too successful a practitioner; for when he was exercising his art upon Glaucus, Zeus killed the physician with a flash of lightning, as he feared that men might gradually escape death altogether. Others say the reason was that Pluto complained that by such medical treatment the number of the dead was too much diminished. On the request of Apollo, Zeus placed Æsculapius amongst the stars. His wife was Epione (the soother). Homer mentions Podalirius and Machaon as sons of Æsculapius, and the following are also said to have been his sons and daughters—Janiscus, Alexenor, Aratus, Hygeia, Ægle, Iaso, and Panaceia. Most of these, as Hygeia, the goddess of health, and Panaceia, the all-healing, it will be seen, are merely personifications of the powers ascribed to their father. There is no doubt that facts are the basis of the Æsculapian story. The divinity was worshipped all over Greece. His temples were for the most part built in mountainous and healthy places, and as often as possible in the neighbourhood of a medicinal spring; in a sense they became the prototypes of our hospitals and medical schools. Multitudes of sick persons visited them, and the priests found it to their interest to study diseases and their remedies; for though faith and religious fervour may do much for the sick, the art of the physician and the hand of the surgeon are adjuncts by no means to be despised even in a temple clinic. The chief of the Æsculapian temples was at Epidaurus; there no one was permitted to die and no woman to give birth to a child. The connection of the serpent with the divinity probably arose from the idea that serpents represent prudence and renovation, and have the power of discovering the secret virtues of healing plants.

The idea of the serpent twined round the rod of Æsculapius is that “as sickness comes from him, from him too must or may come the healing.”[332] The knots on the staff are supposed to symbolize the many knotty points which arise in the practice of physic.

MINERVA was the patroness of all the arts and trades; at her festivals she was invoked by all who desired to distinguish themselves in medicine, as well as by the patients whom they failed to cure. As the goddess of intelligence and inventiveness, she was the Greek patroness of physicians, and was the same deity as Pallas Athene, who bestows health and keeps off sickness.

ARTEMIS, or DIANA, as the Romans called the Greek goddess, was a deity who, inviolate and vigorous herself, granted health and strength to others. She was the sister of Apollo, and though a dispenser of life could, like her brother, send death and disease amongst men and animals. Sudden deaths, especially amongst women, were described as the effect of her arrows. She was θεὰ σώτειρα, who assuaged the sufferings of mortals. When Æneas was wounded, she healed him in the temple of Apollo.[333] Yet Artemis ταυροπόλος produced madness in the minds of men.[334]

She was the Cretan Diktynna, and that goddess wore a wreath of the magic plant diktamnon or dictamnus, called by us dittany (dictamnus ruber, or albus); it grows in abundance on Mounts Dicté and Ida in Crete.

The Cretan goddess BRITOMARTIS was sometimes identified with Artemis. She too was a goddess of health as also of birth, and was supposed to dispense happiness to mortals.

BACCHUS, or, as he was called by the Greeks, DIONYSUS, as the god of wine, and an inspired and an inspiring deity, who revealed the future by oracles, cured diseases by discovering to sufferers in their dreams their appropriate remedies. The prophet, the priest, and the physician are so often blended in one in the early history of civilization, that the same ideas naturally clustered round Bacchus as around Apollo, and other great benefactors of mankind. The giver of vines and wine was the dispenser of the animating, exalting, intoxicating powers of nature. As wine restores the flagging energies of the body and mind, and seems to have the power of calling back to life the departing spirit, and inspiring the languishing vitality of man, Bacchus would naturally enough be a god of medicine. The intoxicating properties of wine would be connected with inspiration, and so Bacchus had a share in the oracles of Delphi and Amphicleia. He was invoked as a θεὸς σωτήρ against raging diseases.

AMMON was an Ethiopian divinity whose worship spread over Egypt, and thence to Greece, and was described as the spirit pervading the universe, and as the author of all life in nature.

HERMES TRISMEGISTUS of the Greeks was identified in the time of Plato with Thoth, Thot, or Theut of the Egyptians.[335]

The Egyptian THOTH was considered the father of all knowledge, and everything committed to writing was looked upon as his property; he was therefore the embodied eek: λόγος, and so τρὶς μέγιστος, or the superlatively greatest. He was identified by the Greeks more or less completely with their own HERMES, or MERCURY as he was known to the Romans; he was the messenger of the gods; as dreams are sent by Zeus, it was his office to convey them to men, and he had power to grant refreshing sleep or to deny the blessing. As the gods revealed the remedies for sickness in dreams, Hermes became a god of medicine.

Thoth, the ibis-headed, was the Egyptian god of letters, the deity of wisdom in general, who aided Horus in his conflict with Seth, and recorded the judgments of the dead before Osiris. Hermes κριοφόρος, the averter of diseases, was worshipped in Bœotia. Hermes, the Greek deity, was king of the dead and the conductor of souls to their future home. Probably, therefore, we may rightly look upon Thoth, Hermes, and Hermes Trismegistus as the same person. By many Thoth is considered to be the Egyptian Æsculapius, as he was the inventor of the healing art; the Phœnician god Esmun, one of the ancient Cabiri, was invested with similar attributes, and was worshipped at Carthage and Berytus. The authorship of the oldest Egyptian works on medicine is ascribed to Thoth. These were engraved on pillars of stone. The works of Thoth were ultimately incorporated into the so-called “Hermetic Books.” Clement of Alexandria, who is our only ancient authority on these Hermetic works, says they were forty-two in number.

PROMETHEUS (the man of freethought) is considered by Æschylus as the founder of human civilization.

Æschylus, in his Prometheus Chained, makes the god say how he had taught each useful art to man. As regards medicine, he says:—

“Hear my whole story; thou wilt wonder more What useful arts, what science I invented. This first and greatest; when the fell disease Preyed on the human frame, relief was none, Nor healing drug, nor cool, refreshing draught, Nor pain-assuaging unguent; but they pined Without redress, and wasted, till I taught them To mix the balmy medicine, of power To chase each pale disease, and soften pain.”[336]

MELAMPUS, who was famous for his prophetic powers, was believed by the Greeks to have been the first mortal who practised the art of medicine, and established the worship of Dionysus in Greece. As doctors are frequently expected to exercise the art of prophecy in conjunction with their profession, it is unfortunate that we have retrograded from the Melampian type. The eminent physician who tells the over-inquisitive friends of his patients that he is “a doctor and not a prophet,” might be answered that originally the two functions were combined. Melampus taught the Greeks to mix their wine with water. He is fabled to have learned the language of the birds from some young serpents who had been reared by him, and who licked his ears when he was asleep. When he awoke he found that he understood what the birds said, and that he could foretell the future.

Iphiclus had no children, and he asked Melampus to tell him how he could become a father. He advised him to take the rust from a knife, and drink it in water during ten days. The remedy was eminently successful, and is the first instance in which a preparation of iron is known to have been prescribed in medicine. He cured the daughters of Prœtus by giving them hellebore (which has been called Melampodium by botanists), and he received the eldest of the princesses in marriage. He cured the women of Argos of a severe distemper which made them insane, and the king showed his gratitude by giving him part of his kingdom. He received divine honours after his death, and temples were raised to him.

THE MEDICINE OF HOMER.

As Homer is supposed to have lived about 850 B.C., a study of such references as are to be found in the Iliad and Odyssey which relate to medicine and surgery will throw an important light on the state of the healing art as it was practised at that early period of Greek history.

There is little mention of disease in Homer. We read of sudden death, pestilence, and the troubles of old age, but there is hardly any fixed morbid condition noticed.

Although the poet exhibits considerable acquaintance with medical lore, and the human body in health and disease, he could have had little or no acquaintance with anatomy, because amongst Greeks, as amongst Jews, it was considered a profanation to dissect or mutilate the human corpse.

It was not till the rise of the Alexandrian school in the golden age of the Ptolemies that this sentiment was overcome. Still Homer must have known that it was the custom of the Egyptians to embalm their dead, as he refers to the process in the Iliad,[337] where Thetis poured into the nostrils of the corpse red nectar and ambrosia to preserve it from putrefaction. Ambrosia is referred to by Virgil as useful for healing wounds, and nectar was supposed to preserve flesh from decay. Homer’s heroes seem to have been singularly healthy folk; their only demand for the services of the army surgeons arose from the accidents of war. MACHAON distinguished himself in surgery, and PODALIRIUS is reputed to have been the first phlebotomist. Their services would be chiefly required for extracting arrow-heads and spear-heads, checking hæmorrhage by compression and styptic applications, and laying soothing ointments on wounded and bruised surfaces. Beyond these minor duties of the army surgeon, we find little record of their work. Mention is not made of amputations, of setting of fractures, or tying of arteries. Wounds were probed by Machaon, surgeon to Menelaus (Book IV.).

Whatever may have been the surgical skill of Machaon, we have proof that the art of dieting the wounded was not at all understood in the Homeric days. The wine and cheese was not the kind of refreshment which found favour in Plato’s time with the Greek physicians. Plato, in the Republic (Book III.), deals with the question at some length. He says that the draught of Pramnian wine with barley meal and cheese was an inflammatory mixture, and a strange potion for a man in the state of Eurypylus.

But he excuses the sons of Asclepius for their treatment, explaining that their method was not intended for coddling invalids, but for such as had not time to be ill, and that the healing art was revealed for the benefit of those whose constitutions were naturally sound, and that doctors used to expel their disorders by drugs and the use of the knife without interrupting their customary avocations, declining altogether to assist chronic invalids to protract a miserable existence by a studied regimen.

Le Clerc says[338] that Plato is wrong in this explanation of the Homeric treatment, and that the true one is that in those days the dietary of the sick was not understood. Modern medicine will decline to accept either theory. The fact is, Homer’s physicians were right. Good old wine was the best thing possible to restore a man fainting from the loss of blood; as for the cheese it was grated fine, and therefore was a peculiarly nutritious food in a fairly digestible condition. The barley water at all times was at least irreproachable. Although there is little evidence in the Homeric poems of any medical treatment which passes the limits of surgery, this is by no means conclusive against the possession of the higher art by Podalirius. In an epic poem, as Le Clerc points out, the subject is altogether too exalted to admit of medical discourses on the treatment of colic and diarrhœa.

Neither must we be surprised, that when the pestilence appeared in the camp of Agamemnon, Podalirius and Machaon did nothing to avert it. Such a disease was at that time considered beyond all human skill, and as the direct visitation of the gods. Homer clearly explains that the pestilence was due to their anger. Galen adduces evidence to prove that Æsculapius did really practise medicine, by music and by gymnastics, or exercises on foot and horseback.

As Le Clerc says,[339] this may have been patriotic exaggeration on the part of Galen. To Podalirius is attributed the invention of the art of bleeding. As he returned from the Trojan war, he was driven by a tempest on the shores of Caria, where a shepherd, having learned that he was a physician, took him to the king, whose daughter was sick. He cured her by bleeding from both arms; the king gave her to him in marriage, with a rich grant of land. This is the oldest example which we have of bleeding.

Podalirius had a son Hippolochus, of whom the great Hippocrates was a descendant. Le Clerc devotes a chapter of his History of Medicine to reflections on the antiquity of the practice of venesection, and speculates on the manner of its discovery. He says, the fact that Homer is silent on the subject makes neither for nor against the theory that it was known in his time; in such works as those of the poet he was under no obligation to specify particularly the remedies employed by the doctors. He speaks, for example, of soothing medicines and bitter roots without further definition. It would be as reasonable to agree that purgation was unknown from Homer’s silence on the matter.

Homer knew something of the parts of the body where wounds are most fatal. He says (Book IV., l. 183), “The arrow fell in no such place as death could enter at,” and (Book VIII., l. 326), where the arrow struck the right shoulder ’twixt the neck and breast, “the wound was wondrous full of death.”

He knew much of drugs and medicinal plants: φάρμακον (pharmakon) in the Iliad is a remedy, an unguent or application, and is mentioned nine times; in the Odyssey it is a drug or medicinal herb, and is referred to twenty times. In Book XI., Eurypylus, when wounded, is treated with the “wholesome onion,” a potion is confected with good old wine of Pramnius, with scraped goat’s-milk cheese and fine flour mixed with it. Later on in the same book, we read of the bruised, bitter, pain-assuaging root being applied to a wound; it was some strong astringent bitter plant, probably a species of geranium.

Then in the Odyssey (Book IV. 200) occurs the reference to nepenthe, a drug which has puzzled commentators exceedingly; some say it was poppy juice, others hashish; we have also the magic moly, which Mercury gave to Ulysses against the charms of Circe. By some this is thought to have been the unpoetical garlic, by others to be wild rue, such as Josephus refers to. It was more probably the mandrake.

There is a very curious and important reference to sulphur, as a disinfectant fumigation in the Odyssey (Book XXII. 481):—

“Bring sulphur straight, and fire” (the monarch cries). “She hears, and at the word obedient flies, With fire and sulphur, cure of noxious fumes, He purged the walls and blood-polluted rooms.”

This is precisely what the sanitary authorities do with fever dens at the present day.

Homer several times refers to Machaon:—

“And great Machaon to the ships convey. A wise physician, skilled our wounds to heal, Is more than armies to the public weal.” (Iliad, XI. 614.)

With Podalirius, his brother, also a “famed surgeon,” he went to Troy with thirty ships. Homer calls them “divine professors of the healing arts” (Iliad, II. 728), and to them was committed the care of the medical work of the expedition.

When Menelaus had been wounded by the spear of Pandarus, Machaon, we are told by Homer (Iliad, IV. 218)—

“Sucked the blood, and sovereign balm infused, Which Cheiron gave, and Æsculapius used.”

Agamede is referred to by Homer (Iliad, XI. 739) as acquainted with the healing properties of all the plants that grow on the earth. She was a daughter of Augeias, and wife of Mulius. The poet refers to her as—

“She that all simples’ healing virtues knew, And every herb that drinks the morning dew.”[340]

HESIOD lived about the same time as Homer. He wrote the famous Works and Days, a species of farmer’s calendar, and the Theogony.

On account of the knowledge he possessed of the properties of plants, Theophrastus, Pliny, and others ranked him amongst the physicians.[341]

Both Podalirius and Machaon were held in great honour, not only as combatants, but as medical advisers, and Homer’s account of them exhibits the medical profession of his time as one that was very highly esteemed. In the fragment of Arctinus which remains to us, we find thus early the distinction made between the arts of medicine and surgery, the two principal divisions of medical science: “Then Asclepius bestowed the power of healing upon his two sons; nevertheless, he made one of the two more celebrated than the other; on one did he bestow the lighter hand, that he might draw missiles from the flesh, and sew up and heal all wounds; but he other he endowed with great precision of mind, so as to understand what cannot be seen, and to heal seemingly incurable diseases.”[342]

This very interesting extract not only shows the early separation of the arts of medicine and surgery, but it exhibits very clearly how it arose that the former was always held to be the higher branch of the medical profession. To sew up a laceration, or extract an arrow or a thorn from the flesh, demanded only manual dexterity; but “to understand that which cannot be seen,” and heal internal organs that cannot even be touched, required a skill and a mental precision that men even in those early times were able to appreciate as much the higher of the two arts. There seems, however, some confusion of the two branches in the lines:—

“A wise physician, skilled our wounds to heal, Is more than armies to the public weal.”

If we suppose that the account of venesection which attributes its discovery to Podalirius is fabulous, this would only serve to prove the antiquity of the practice. Hippocrates is said to be the first medical writer who has spoken of bleeding,[343] yet we must not suppose it was unknown before his time. He advises blood-letting from the arm, from the temporal vessels, from the leg, etc., in some cases even to fainting. He is familiar with cupping and other methods of abstracting blood; it is not probable, therefore, that the operation was a new one in his day.

The discovery of the practice of purging as a remedy was attributed to Melampus. But we know that the Egyptians made use of purgative and emetic medicines. There were many purgatives in use in the time of Hippocrates, as hellebore, elaterium, colocynth, and scammony. All these medicines could not have been discovered at once, as Le Clerc points out; mankind, therefore, must have gradually acquired their use. When persons were overloaded in the stomach and constipated, nothing was more natural than that they should seek relief by removing the mechanical causes of their distress. Some one had taken some herb which had caused him to vomit or to be purged, and had experienced the benefit of the evacuation; he told his friends, and they perhaps had been aided by similar means. Or again, some illness had been alleviated by the supervention of diarrhœa, and art was called in to imitate the beneficial effect of nature’s cure. In this way, says Le Clerc, bleeding may reasonably have been discovered: a severe headache is often relieved by bleeding from the nose, what more natural than that the process of relief should be imitated by opening a vein?

Pliny, indeed, in his usual manner, introduces a fable to account for the discovery of venesection. He says[344] that the hippopotamus having become too fat and unwieldy through over-eating, bled himself with a sharp-pointed reed, and when he had drawn sufficient blood, closed the wound with clay. Men have imitated the operation, says Pliny. This is matched by the story of the ibis with her long bill being the inventor of the clyster. Most of the medical beast stories are probably on a level with these.

Hygeia, the wife of Æsculapius, and her children, bore names which show the same poetic fancy as that which constituted Apollo the author of medicine. Æsculapius is the air. Hygeia is health; Ægle is brightness or splendour, because the air is illumined and purified by the sun. Iaso is recovery, Panacea the universal medicine, Roma is strength.

The ancients everywhere believed that the healing art was taught to mankind by the gods. “The art of medicine,” says Cicero, “has been consecrated by the invention of the immortal gods.”[345]

Hippocrates[346] attributed the art of medicine to the Supreme Being. As the Greeks believed that the arts in general were invented by the gods, it was a natural belief that the knowledge of medicine should have been taught by the heavenly powers. The mysteries of life, disease, and death were peculiarly the province of supernatural beings, and man has ever attributed to such powers all those things which he could not comprehend.

THE TEMPLES OF ÆSCULAPIUS.

The worship of Asclepius or Æsculapius is so closely associated with the practice of Greek medicine that it is impossible to understand the one without knowing something of the other. Sick persons made pilgrimages to the temples of the god of healing, just as now they go to Lourdes, St. Winifred’s Well, or other famous Christian shrines for the recovery of their health. After prayers to the god, ablutions, and sacrifices, the patient was put to sleep on the skin of the animal offered at the altar, or at the foot of the statue of the divinity, while the priests performed their sacred rites. In his sleep he would have pointed out to him in a dream what he ought to do for the recovery of his health. Sometimes the appropriate medicine would be suggested, but more commonly rules of conduct and diet would suffice. When the cure took place, which very frequently happened by suggestion as in modern hypnotism, and by the stimulus to the nervous system consequent upon the journey, and the hope excited in the patient, a record of the case and the cure was carved on the temple walls. Thus were recorded the first histories of cases, and their study afforded the most valuable treatises on the healing art to the physicians who studied them. The priests of Æsculapius were sometimes called Asclepiads, but they did not themselves act as physicians, nor were they the actual founders of Greek medicine. The true Asclepiads were healers and not priests. Anathemata (ἀνάθεμα, anything offered up) were offerings of models in gold, silver, etc., of diseased legs, feet, etc., or of deformed limbs consecrated to the gods in the temples by the devotion of the patients who had received benefit from the prayers to the deities who were worshipped therein. The priests of the temples sold these again and again to fresh patients.

THE EARLY IONIC PHILOSOPHERS.

The various schools of Greek philosophy were intimately associated with the study of medicine. They endeavoured to fathom the mystery of life, and the relationship of the visible order of things to the unseen world. The philosophers were therefore not only physicists, but metaphysicians, and the unhappy science of medicine, a homeless wanderer, had to shelter herself now with the natural philosophers and again with the metaphysicians. Probably the philosophers never really practised physic, but merely speculated about it, as did Plato. A brief notice of the various philosophers of the Ionic, Italian, Eleatic, and Materialistic schools who were more or less associated with the study of medicine must suffice as an introduction to Greek medicine proper, which had its origin with Hippocrates.

THALES OF MILETUS (about 609 B.C.), the Ionian philosopher, introduced Egyptian and Asiatic science into Greece. He had probably in his travels in the land of the Pharaohs devoted himself to mathematical pursuits, and if not a scientific inquirer was a deep speculator on the origin of things. He held that everything arises from water, and everything ultimately again resolves itself into water. Everything, he said, is full of gods; the soul originates motion (the magnet has a soul, according to him), and so the indwelling power or soul of water produces the phenomena of the natural world. He must not, however, be understood as teaching the doctrine of the Soul of the Universe, or of a Creating Deity. Thales was the first writer on physics and the founder of the philosophy of Greece. Le Clerc connects him with medicine by his converse with the priest-physicians of Egypt, and that he had performed certain expiatory or purifying ceremonies for the Lacedæmonians which could only be done by such as were divines and physicians.[347]

PHERECYDES, the Syrian, a philosopher who lived about the same time as Thales, is said by Galen to have written upon diet.

EPIMENEDES was a sort of Greek Rip Van Winkle, who purified Athens in the time of a plague by means of mysterious rites and sacrifices. He excelled as a fasting man, so that he was said to have been exempt from the ordinary necessities of nature, and could send out his soul from his body and recall it like the Mahatmas. He was of the class of priestly bards, a seer and prophet who was well acquainted with the virtues of plants for medicinal purposes, and as he was believed to have gone to sleep in a cave for fifty-seven years, he was credited with the possession of supernatural medicinal powers.[348]

ANAXIMANDER, born B.C. 610, is said to have been a pupil of Thales. He taught that a single determinate substance having a middle nature between water and air was the infinite, everlasting, and divine, though not intelligent material from which all things had their origin. This he called the ἄπειρον, the chaos. All substances were derived thence by the conflict of heat and cold and the electric affinities of the particles. The atomic theory is foreshadowed here.

ANAXIMENES was the friend of Thales and Anaximander, and all three were born at Miletus. He considered that air was the first cause of all things, or primary condition of matter; all finite things were formed from the infinite air by compression or rarefaction produced by eternal motion. Heat and cold are produced by the varying density of the primal element. He held the eternity of matter like his brother philosophers, and believed that the soul itself is merely a form of air. He held no Divine Author of the Universe, motion being a necessary law of the universe, and with motion and air he required nothing else for the constitution of all things.

HERACLEITUS of Ephesus, born about 556 B.C., embodied his system of philosophy in his work On Nature. He held that the ground of all phenomena is a physical principle, a living unity, pervading everything, inherent in all things—fire, that is, as he explains, a clear light fluid “self-kindled and self-extinguished.” The world was not created by God, but evolved from the rational intelligence which guides the universe—fire. Fire longs to manifest itself in various forms; from its pure state in heaven it descends, assumes the form of earth, passing in its progress through that of water. Man’s soul is a spark of the divine fire.

ANAXAGORAS, born about 499 B.C., was the friend of Pericles and Euripides at Athens. Seeking to explain the world and man by a higher cause than the physical ones of his predecessors, he postulated nous—that is, mind, thought, or intelligence. As nothing can come out of nothing, he did not attribute to this nous the creation of the world, but only its order and arrangement. Matter is eternal, but existed as chaos till nous evolved order from the confusion. Baas[349] says his physiological and pathological views may be thus described: “The animal body, by means of a kind of affinity, appropriates to itself from the nutritive supply the portions similar to itself. Males originate in the right, females in the left side of the uterus. Diseases are occasioned by the bile which penetrates into the blood-vessels, the lungs, and the pleura.” He undertook the dissection of animals, remarked the existence in the brain of the lateral ventricles, and was the first to declare that the bile is the cause of acute sickness.[350]

DIOGENES OF APOLLONIA, the eminent natural philosopher, lived at Athens about 460 B.C. He was a pupil of Anaximenes, and wrote a work entitled On Nature, in which he treated of physical science generally. Aristotle has preserved for us some of the few fragments which remain. The most important is the description of the origin and distribution of the veins, and is inserted in the third book of Aristotle’s History of Animals. Diogenes Laertius gives an account of the philosophical teaching of the philosopher: “He maintained that air was the primal element of all things; that there was an infinite number of worlds, and an infinite void; that air, densified and rarefied, produced the different members of the universe; that nothing was produced from nothing, or was reduced to nothing; that the earth was round, supported in the middle, and had received its shape from the whirling round of the warm vapours, and its concretion and hardening from cold.”[351]

Diogenes recognised no distinction between mind and matter, yet he considered air possessed intellectual energy.

We find in this philosopher many indications that the vascular system was in some degree beginning to be understood.[352] Mr. Lewes and Mr. Grote agree that Diogenes deserves a higher place in the evolution of philosophy than either Hegel or Schwegler.

EMPEDOCLES of Agrigentum, born about 490 B.C., now bears forward the flaming torch of medical science, and in his hands it burns more brightly still. Aristotle mentions him among the Ionian physiologists, and ranks him with the atomistic philosophers and Anaxagoras. These all sought to discover the basis of all changes and to explain them. According to Empedocles: “There are four ultimate kinds of things, four primal divinities, of which are made all structures in the world—fire, air, water, and earth. These four elements are eternally brought into union, and eternally parted from each other, by two divine beings or powers, love and hatred—an attractive and a repulsive force which the ordinary eye can see working amongst men, but which really pervade the whole world. According to the different proportions in which these four indestructible and unchangeable matters are combined with each other is the difference of the organic structure produced; e.g., flesh and blood are made of equal parts of all four elements, whereas bones are one-half fire, one-fourth earth, and one-fourth water. It is in the aggregation and segregation of elements thus arising that Empedocles, like the atomists, finds the real process which corresponds to what is popularly termed growth, increase, or decrease. Nothing new comes or can come into being; the only change that can occur is a change in the juxtaposition of element with element.”[353]

He considered that men, animals, and plants are demons punished by banishment, but who, becoming purified, may regain the home of the gods. It is hardly necessary to say that he held the demoniacal possession theory of disease, and treated all complaints by means appropriate to the theory. Anticipating the modern opinions of the bacteriologists, he banished epidemics by building great fires and draining the water from marshy lands. He understood something of the causes of infectious diseases, and in their treatment usurped the province of the gods who had sent them.[354] He believed the embryo was nourished through the navel. We owe to him the terms amnion and chorion (i.e., the innermost and outer membranes with which the fœtus is surrounded in the womb). He believed that death was caused by extinction of heat, that expiration arose from the upward motion of the blood, and inspiration from the reverse. He is said to have raised a dead woman to life.[355]

Empedocles believed in the doctrine of re-incarnation. “I well remember,” he says, “the time before I was Empedocles, that I once was a boy, then a girl, a plant, a glittering fish, a bird that cut the air.” To his disciples he said: “By my instructions you shall learn medicines that are powerful to cure disease, and re-animate old age—you shall recall the strength of the dead man, when he has already become the victim of Pluto.”[356] Further speaking of himself, he says: “I am revered by both men and women, who follow me by ten thousands, inquiring the road to boundless wealth, seeking the gift of prophecy, and who would learn the marvellous skill to cure all kinds of diseases.”[357]

THE SCHOOL OF THE PYTHAGOREANS AT CROTONA.

Although in ancient Greece the art of medicine, as we have already shown, was closely connected with the temples, if not actually with religion, its entanglement with philosophy was a scarcely less unfortunate connection, and it was not able to make any real progress till HIPPOCRATES liberated it from both priests and philosophers. 582 years before Christ PYTHAGORAS was born, the ideal hero or saint whom we faintly discern through the mythical haze which has always enveloped him. Philosopher, prophet, wonder-worker, and physician, he gathered into his mind as into a focus the wisdom of the Brahmans, the Persian Magi, the Egyptians, the Phœnicians, the Chaldæans, the Jews, the Arabians, and the Druids of Gaul, amongst whom he had travelled, if we may believe what is reported of him. He may have visited Egypt,[358] at any rate, besides acquainting himself with the countries of the Mediterranean. His authentic history begins with his emigration to Crotona, in South Italy, about the year 529. There he founded a kind of religious brotherhood or ethical-reform society, and “appeared as the revealer of a mode of life calculated to raise his disciples above the level of mankind, and to recommend them to the favour of the gods.”[359] Grote believes that the removal to Crotona was prompted by the desire to study medicine in its famous school, probably combined with the notion of instructing the pupils in his philosophy. He rendered great services to the healing art by insisting on the necessity of a thorough comprehension of the organs, structure, and functions of the body in their normal, healthy condition; this must be conceded, though his visionary philosophy did much to destroy the scientific value of his medical teaching.

The founder of the healing art amongst the Greeks and Hellenic peoples generally was Pythagoras. He was imbued with Eastern mysticism, teaching that the air is full of spiritual beings, who send dreams to men and cause to men and cattle disease and health. He taught that these spirits must be conciliated by lustrations and invocations. Pliny says[360] that he taught that holding dill (anethum) in the hand is good against epilepsy. The health of the body is to be maintained by diet and gymnastics. It is interesting to find that this great philosopher recommended music to restore the harmony of the spirits. Besides the magic virtues of the dill, he held that many other plants possessed them, such as the cabbage (a food in great favour with the Pythagoreans), the squill, and anise. He held that surgery was not to be practised, as it is unlawful, but salves and poultices were to be permitted. His disciples attributed the union between medicine and philosophy to him.

The Pythagorean philosophy turns upon the idea of numbers and the mathematical relations of things. “All things are number;” “number is the essence of everything.” The world subsists by the principle of ordered numbers. The spheres revolve harmoniously; the seven planets are the seven golden chords of the heavenly heptachord. As a corollary to this notion we have the theory of opposites. We have the odd and even, and their combinations. The even is the unlimited, the odd the limited; so all things are derived from the combination of the limited and the unlimited. Then we get the limited and the unlimited, the odd and the even, the one and many, right and left, masculine and feminine, rest and motion, straight and crooked, light and darkness, good and evil, square and oblong. When opposites unite, there is harmony. The number ten comprehends all other numbers in itself; four was held in great respect, because it is the first square number and the potential decade (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10). Pythagoras was the discoverer of the holy τετρακτύς, “the fountain and root of ever-living nature.” Five signifies marriage, one is reason because unchangeable, two is opinion, seven is called παρθένος and Ἀθήνη, because within the decade it has neither factors nor product.[361]

The doctrine of transmigration of souls, metempsychosis, is Pythagoras’s. He probably borrowed it from the Orphic mysteries; originally no doubt it came from Asia. Asceticism, mysticism, and Neoplatonism sprang from this noble and lofty philosophy. Closely connected with his theory of numbers he held that from these points are produced, from these lines, from lines figures, and from figures solid bodies. The elements fire, water, earth, and air, account in his conception for the formation of the world. He understood the structure of the body, its procreation and development. He believed that the animal soul is an emanation from the world-soul; the universal soul is God, author of himself. Demons are an order of beings between the highest and the lowest. Striving for the good brings moral health. Bodily health means harmony, disease means discord. Diseases are caused by demons, and are to be dispelled by prayers, offerings, and music. He first among the Greeks taught the immortality of the soul; he held a doctrine of rewards and punishments, and taught that of metempsychosis. For many succeeding ages the Pythagorean doctrine had the greatest influence on the art of medicine.[362]

Le Clerc says that Pythagoras obtained his ideas of the climacteric years from the Chaldæans. The term is applied to the seventh year of the life of man, and it was anciently believed that at each change we incur some risk to life or health, on account of the bodily changes undergone at that time.[363] Celsus says that the medical sentiment with respect to the septenary number in diseases, and that of the odd and even days, is of Pythagorean origin.[364] The Pythagoreans had a great respect for the number four. The quaternary number was sacred to the Egyptians; they burned in the temples of Isis a kind of resinous gum, myrrh, and other drugs, in the preparation of which they had regard to the number four. The Israelites imitated them in this respect (Exod. xxx. 2).[365]

The sacred bean of Pythagoras was the object of religious veneration in Egypt; the priests were commanded not to look upon it. It is thought to have been the East Indian Nelumbium.[366]

ZAMOLXIS, who was a god to the Getans, is supposed by some to have been a slave and disciple of Pythagoras; by others he is considered an altogether mythical personage. He is credited by those who believe him to have been a physician with having said that “A man could not cure the eyes without curing the head, nor the head without all the rest of the body, nor the body without the soul.” Plato said much the same thing when he remarked, “To cure a headache you must treat the whole man.” Zamolxis cured the soul, not by the enchantments of magic, but by wise discourse and reasonable conversation. “These discourses,” said Plato, “produce wisdom in the soul, which having once been acquired it is easy after that to procure health both for the head and all the rest of the body.”

DEMOCEDES was a celebrated physician of Crotona, in Magna Grecia, who lived in the sixth century B.C. He went to practise at Ægina, where he received from the public treasury a sum equal to about £344 a year for his services. The next year he went to Athens at a salary equal to £406, and the following year he went to the island of Samos. The tyrant Polycrates gave him the salary of two talents. He was carried prisoner to Susa to the court of Darius, where he acquired a great reputation and much wealth by curing the king’s foot and the breast of the queen. It is recorded that Darius ordered the surgeons who had failed to cure him to be put to death, but Democedes interceded for and saved them. He ultimately escaped to Crotona, where he settled, the Persians having in vain demanded his return.[367] He wrote a work on medicine.

DEMOCRITUS, of Abdera, was a contemporary of Socrates; he was born between 494 and 460 B.C., and was one of the founders of the Atomic philosophy. He was profoundly versed in all the knowledge of his time. So ardent a student was he, that he once said that he preferred the discovery of a true cause to the possession of the kingdom of Persia. The highest object of scientific investigation he held to be the discovery of causes. He wrote on medicine, and devoted himself zealously to the study of anatomy and physiology. Pliny says that he composed a special treatise on the structure of the chameleon.[368] He wrote on canine rabies, and on the influence of music in the treatment of disease. He is, however, best known to science on account of his cosmical theory. All that exists is vacuum and atoms. The atoms are the ultimate material of all things, even of spirit. They are uncaused and eternal, invisible, yet extended, heavy and impenetrable. They are in constant motion, and have been so from all eternity. By their motion the world and all it contains was produced. Soul and fire are of the same nature, of small, smooth, round atoms, and it is by inhaling and exhaling these that life is maintained. The soul perishes with the body. He rejected all theology and popular mythology. Reason had nothing to do with the creation of the world, and he said, “There is nothing true; and if there is, we do not know it.” “We know nothing, not even if there is anything to know.” He died in great honour, yet in poverty, at an advanced age (some writers say at 109 years). His knowledge of nature, and especially of medicine, caused him to be considered a sorcerer and a magician. There was a tradition that he deprived himself of his sight in order to be undisturbed in his intellectual speculations. He probably became blind by too close attention to study. Another story was that he was considered to be insane, and Hippocrates was sent for to cure him.

The great philosophers of ancient Greece believed that all the elements are modifications of one common substance, called the primary matter, which they demonstrated to be devoid of all quality and form, but susceptible of all qualities and forms. It is everything in capacity, but nothing in actuality. Matter is eternal; the elements are the first matter arranged into certain distinguishing forms. Some of the early philosophers held that all the materials which compose the universe existed in a fluid form; they understood by fire, matter in a highly refined state, and that it is the element most intimately connected with life, some even considering it the very essence of the soul. “Our souls are fire,” says Phornutus. “What we call heat is immortal,” says one of the Hippocratic writers, “and understands, sees, and hears all things that are or will be.”[369]

Bacon explains the ancient fable of Proteus as signifying matter, a something which, being below all forms and supporting them, is yet different from them all.

Sir Isaac Newton is not widely different from Strabo when he says that all bodies may be convertible into one another.

Commenting upon these opinions of the Greek philosophers, Dr. Adams says, in his introduction to the works of Hippocrates:[370] “If every step which we advance in the knowledge of the intimate structure of things leads us to contract the number of substances formerly held to be simple, I would not wonder if it should yet turn out that oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen are—like what the ancients held the elements to be—all nothing else but different modifications of one ever-changing matter.”

The theories of the Greek philosophers on the elements are poetically summed up in Ovid’s Metamorphoses:—

“Nor those which elements we call abide, Nor to this figure nor to that are ty’d: For this eternal world is said of old But four prolific principles to hold, Four different bodies; two to heaven ascend, And other two down to the centre tend. Fire first, with wings expanded, mounts on high, Pure, void of weight, and dwells in upper sky; Then air, because unclogged, in empty space Flies after fire, and claims the second place; But weighty water, as her nature guides, Lies on the lap of earth; and mother Earth subsides. All things are mixed of these, which all contain, And into these are all resolved again; Earth rarifies to dew; expanding more, The subtle dew in air begins to soar; Spreads as she flies, and, weary of the name, Extenuates still, and changes into flame. Thus having by degrees perfection won, Restless, they soon untwist the web they spun, And fire begins to lose her radiant hue, Mixed with gross air, and air descends in dew! And dew condensing, does her form forego, And sinks, a heavy lump of earth, below. Thus are their figures never at a stand, But changed by Nature’s innovating hand.”[371]

GREEK THEORIES OF DISEASE.

As the Greeks believed that all diseases were the consequences of the anger of the gods, it was in their temples that cures were most likely to take place. Faith was the sine quâ non in the patient, and everything about the temple and its ceremonies was calculated to excite religious awe and to stimulate faith. Preliminary purifications, fasting, massage, and fomentations with herbs, were necessary parts of the initiatory ceremonies, and the imagination was excited by everything that the sufferer saw around him. He heard the stories of the marvellous cures which had taken place at the sacred fane. Tablets round the walls, placed there by grateful worshippers who had been cured in the past,[372] served to fill the mind with hope, when, as was the practice, the patient lay down in the holy place by the image of the healing god, that in the incubatory sleep the remedies which were to cure him might be revealed. Sometimes no such revelation was vouchsafed, then sacrifices and prayers were offered; if these failed, the priests themselves would appear in the mask and the dress of the healing god, and in the darkness and mystery of the night reveal the necessary prescriptions. To interpret the dreams was the task of the priests at all times, just as it was in the temples of ancient Egypt. Divination, magic, and astrology largely assisted in the work of discovering the requisite remedies. If all failed, it was due not to any defect on the part of the divinity or his servants, but simply to the want of faith on the part of the patient. The festivals of Æsculapius were called Asclepia, and the presiding priests of the healing god were named Asclepiades. The schools of the Asclepiades were a sort of medical guild, and their doctrines were divided into exoteric and esoteric. They naturally became possessed of a great body of medical teaching, which was preserved as a precious secret and handed down from generation to generation. The Asclepiadæ thus became the hereditary physicians of Greece. Medicine at this period was not a science to be taught to all comers, but was a mystery to be orally transmitted. These men pretended to be descendants of Æsculapius, just as now the imitators of medicines, perfumes, etc., which have become celebrated, give out that they belong to the family of the inventor, and thus know the secrets of the preparation.[373]

This professional class was quite distinct from the priests of the Æsculapian temples, though many writers have confused them. Probably the truth is this:—Certain students from reading the votive tablets in the temples, and examining the persons who came to be cured, gave their attention to the art of medicine, and established themselves as physicians in the neighbourhood of the temples; for it does not appear that the priests themselves pretended to medical skill. They were the instruments of the divine revelation, the mediums of the healing power of the god; they suggested remedies, but did not attempt their application or the treatment of cases. In process of time the pilgrims to the temples would require human aid to supplement the often disappointing divine assistance, and this the Asclepiadæ were appointed to supply. Hypnotism was probably practised; music, and such drugs as hemlock were also employed which soothe the nervous system and relieve pain. The Asclepiadæ took careful notes of the symptoms and progress of each case, and were particular to observe the effect of the treatment prescribed; they became, in consequence, exceedingly skilful in prognosis. Galen says that little attention was paid to dietetics by the Asclepiads; but Strabo speaks of the knowledge which Hippocrates derived from the documents in the Asclepion of Cos.[374] Exercise, especially on horseback, was one of the measures used by the Asclepiads for restoring the health.[375]

SCHOOLS OF THE ASCLEPIADES.

The three most famous schools of the Asclepiades were those of Rhodes, Cos, and Cnidos. There were also that of Crotona, in Lower Italy, established by Pythagoras, and the school of Cyrene, in the North of Africa. Famous temples of Æsculapius existed at Titanæ, Epidaurus, Orope, Cyllene, Tithorea, Tricca, Megalopolis, Pergamus, Corinth, Smyrna, and at many other places.[376]

A spirit of healthy emulation existed in these different schools, which was most advantageous for the progress of medical science. The tone existing at this early period amongst the different medical societies at these institutions is shown in the famous oath which the pupils of the Asclepiadæ were compelled to subscribe on completing their course of instruction in medicine. It is the oldest written monument of the Greek art of healing.[377]

THE OATH.

“I swear by Apollo, the physician, and Æsculapius, and Health, and Panacea,[378] and all the gods and goddesses, that, according to my ability and judgment, I will keep this oath and this stipulation—to reckon him who taught me this art equally dear to me as my parents, to share my substance with him, and relieve his necessities if required; to look upon his offspring in the same footing as my own brothers, and to teach them this art, if they shall wish to learn it, without fee or stipulation; and that by precept, lecture, and every other mode of instruction, I will impart a knowledge of the art to my own sons, and those of my teachers, and to disciples bound by a stipulation and oath according to the law of medicine, but to none others. I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patient, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous. I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion. With purity and with holiness I will pass my life and practise my art. I will not cut persons labouring under the stone, but will leave this to be done by men who are practitioners of this work.[379]

“Into whatever houses I enter, I will go into them for the benefit of the sick, and will abstain from every voluntary act of mischief and corruption; and, further, from the seduction of females or males, of freemen or slaves. Whatever, in connection with my professional practice, or not in connection with it, I see or hear, in the life of men, which ought not to be spoken of abroad, I will not divulge, as reckoning that all such should be kept secret. While I continue to keep this oath unviolated, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and the practice of the art, respected by all men, in all times! But should I trespass and violate this oath, may the reverse be my lot!”

Ancient authorities differ as to the respective order in which the schools of the Asclepiads should be esteemed. Rhodes, Cos, and Cnidos continually disputed for the pre-eminence, Cos and Cnidos acquiring great fame by their conflicting opinions. According to Galen, the first place must be conceded to Cos, as having produced the greatest number of excellent disciples, amongst whom was Hippocrates; he ranks Cnidos next. Cos (B.C. 600) was the objective school, and devoted its studies chiefly to symptomatology. It asked, what can we see of the patient’s disorder? of what does he complain? what, in fact, are his symptoms? This is practical medicine, though not so much in accordance with modern scientific medicine as the method of Cnidos, the subjective school. There the aim was to make a correct diagnosis; to find out what was behind the symptoms, what caused the morbid appearances; what it was that the sensations of the patient indicated; and its aim was not to treat symptoms so much as to treat vigorously the disorder which caused them. Auscultation, or the art of scientifically listening to the sounds of the chest, those of the lungs in breathing, and of the heart in beating, was to some extent understood and practised at Cnidos. The medical school of Crotona was in the highest repute 500 B.C., probably on account of its connection with the Pythagoreans. The school of Rhodes does not seem to have had a long life.

That of Cyrene was famous on account not only of its medical teaching, but from the fact that mathematics and philosophy were industriously pursued there. The teaching in all these schools must have been of a very high order; for, though unfortunately little of it has descended directly to us, we have sufficient evidence of its importance in such fragments as are to be found incorporated with the works of Hippocrates, such as the Coan Prognostics and the Cnidian Sentences; the former, a miscellaneous collection of the observations made by the physician of Cos, and the latter, a work attributed to Euryphon, a celebrated physician of Cnidos (about the former half of the fifth century B.C.).

Experiment and observation were insisted upon in the study of anatomy and physiology. Galen tells us in his second book, On Anatomical Manipulations: “I do not blame the ancients, who did not write books on anatomical manipulations; though I praise Marinus, who did. For it was superfluous for them to compose such records for themselves or others, while they were, from their childhood, exercised by their parents in dissecting, just as familiarly as in writing and reading; so that there was no more fear of their forgetting their anatomy than of their forgetting their alphabet. But when grown men, as well as children, were taught, this thorough discipline fell off; and, the art being carried out of the family of the Asclepiads, and declining by repeated transmission, books became necessary for the student.”

The method of the Asclepiadæ was one of true induction; much was imperfect in their efforts to arrive at the beginning of medical science. They had little light, and often stumbled; but they made the best use of what they had, and with all their deviations they always returned to the right path, and kept their faces towards the light. Hippocrates was of them; and Bacon of Verulam, in the centuries to come, followed and developed the same method. Dr. Adams remarks the assiduous observation and abundant rational experience which led them to enunciate such a law of nature as this: “Those things which bring alleviation with bad signs, and do not remit with good, are troublesome and difficult.”

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CTESIAS, of Cnidus, in Caria, was a physician at the court of King Artaxerxes Mnemon. He may be called a contemporary of Herodotus. It is possible that, according to Diodorus, he was a prisoner of war while in Persia, though the well-known fact that Greek physicians were in great request, and were always received there with favour, is quite sufficient to account for his presence in that country. He wrote a history of Persia and a treatise on India, containing many statements formerly considered doubtful, but now proved to be founded on facts.

The persons who anointed the bodies of the athletes of ancient Greece, preparatory to their entering the gymnasia, were called ALIPTÆ. These persons taught gymnastic exercises, practised many operations of surgery, and undertook the treatment of trifling diseases. The external use of oil was intended to close the pores of the skin, so as to prevent excessive perspiration. The oil was mixed with sand, and was well rubbed into the skin. After the exercises, the athletes were again anointed, to restore the tone of the muscles. The aliptæ would naturally acquire considerable knowledge of the accidents and maladies to which the human body was subject; accordingly, we find that they not only undertook the treatment of fractures and dislocations, but became the regular medical advisers of their patrons. ICCUS of Tarentum devoted himself to dietetics. They were probably a superior class of trainers. HERODICUS of Selymbria, a teacher of Hippocrates, treated diseases by exercises. He is said to have been the first to demand a fee in place of the presents which were given by patients formerly to their doctors.[380] The gymnasia were dedicated to Apollo, the god of physicians.[381] The directors of the institutions regulated the diet of the young men, the sub-directors prescribed for their diseases.[382] The inferiors, or bathers, bled, gave clysters, and dressed wounds.[383]

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