Homer's speakers rarely talk impertinently. Idomeneus is shewing the use of a physician in an army: now, surely, his use on these occasions consists in healing wounds. The poet therefore chose his topic of recommendation with good judgment; and we may be certain, had he spoken of the use of a physician in a peaceable city, he had placed it in the art of curing distempers: and this is no imagination: we shall see presently that he hath in fact done so. In the mean time let me ask, what there is in this passage, which in the least intimates that the WHOLE art consisted in extracting arrows, and applying anodynes? But Pliny says so,* who understands Homer to intimate thus much. What then? Is not Homer's poem still remaining; and cannot we see, without Pliny, what inference the rules of good sense authorise us to draw from the poet's words? The general humour of Antiquity, which was strangely superstitious with regard to this Father of the poets,† may be some excuse for Pliny in concluding so much from his silence; for Homer was their bible; and whatsoever was not read therein, nor could be expresly proved thereby, passed with them for apocryphal. But let us, whose veneration for Homer rises not quite so high, fairly examine the nature of his first great work: This, which is an intire scene of war and slaughter, gave him frequent occasion to take notice of outward applications, but none of internal remedies; except in the history of the pestilence; which being believed to come in punishment from the Gods, was supposed to submit to nothing but religious atonements : not to say, that it was the chirurgical part of healing only that could be mentioned with sufficient diguity. The Greeks were large feeders, and bitter railers; for which excesses, I suppose, Machaon, during the ten years siege, administered many a sound emetic and cathartic: but these were no proper ornaments for an epic poem. I said, his subject did not give him occasion to mention inward applications; nor was this said evasively, as shall now be shewn from his second poem, of a more peaceable turn; which admitting the mention of that other part of the art of medicine, the use of internal remedies, he has therefore spoken in its praise: Helen is brought in, giving Telemachus a preparation of opium; which, the poet tells us, she had from Polydamna, the wife of Thon the Egyptian, whose country abounded with medicinal drugs, many of which were salubrious, and • "Medicina-Trojanis temporibus clara-vulnerum tamen duntaxat remediis."Nat. Hist. lib. xxix. cap. 1. Celsus too talks in the same strain: "Quos tamen Homerus non in pestilentia, neque in variis generibus morborum aliquid attulisse auxilii, sed vulneribus tantummodo ferro et medicamentis mederi solitos esse proposuit. Ex quo apparet has partes medicinæ solas ab his esse tentatas, easque esse vetustissimas."-De Medicina, lib. i. Præf. "Homerum poetam multiscium, vel potius cunctarum rerum adprime peritum." And again: "Ut omnis vetustatis certissimus auctor Homerus docet." This was said by Apuleius, a very celebrated platonic philosopher, in a juridical defence of himself before a proconsul of Africa, many baneful; whence the physicians of that land were more skilful than the rest of mankind. Τοῖα Διὸς θυγάτηρ ἔχε φάρμακα μητιόεντα, Ἐσθλὰ, τὰ οἱ Πολύδαμνα πόρεν Θῶνος παράκοιτις ̓Ανθρώπων· ἡ γὰρ Παιήονός εἰσι γενέθλης. Here then is an express testimony much earlier than the time of Homer, for the Egyptian physicians practising more than surgery; which was the thing to be proved. Our author goes on: In the days of Pythagoras the learned began to form rules of diet for the preservation of health, and to prescribe in this point to sick persons. This is founded on the rules of diet observed in the Pythagoric school. There seems to be something strangely perverse in this writer's way of arguing;-In the case of the Egyptian regimen, though it be expresly delivered by the Greek writers as a medicinal one, yet by reason of some superstitions in it, our author will have it to be a religious observance; on the contrary, this Pythagoric regimen, though it be generally represented, and even by Jamblichus himself, as a superstitious practice, yet by reason of its healthfulness, he will have to be a course of physic. He proceeds :-HIPPOCRATES began the practice of visiting sick-bed patients, and prescribed medicines with success for their distempers. For which, Pliny is again quoted; who does indeed say he was the founder of the clinic sect: but it is strange he should say so; since Hippocrates himself, in numerous places of his writings, has informed us that it was founded long before. His tract De diæta in acutis, begins in this manner : "Those who have collected what we call the CNIDIAN SENTENCES, have accurately enough registered the various symptoms or affections in the several distempers, with the causes of some of them: thus far might be well performed by a writer who was no physician, if so it were, that he carefully examined each patient about his several affections. But what a physician should previously be well instructed in, and what he cannot learn from his patient, that, for the most part, is omitted in this work; some things in this place, others in that; several of which are very useful to be known in the art of judging by signs. As to what is said of judging by signs, or how the cure should be attempted, I think very differently from them. And it is not in this particular only that they have not my approbation: I as little like their practice in using so small a number of medicines; for the greatest part they mention, except in acute distempers, are purgatives, and whey, and Odyss. lib. iv. 227, et seq. Clarke on this place of Homer observes that Pliny, lib. xxv. cap. 1, quotes this passage as ascribing a knowledge of medicinal herbs to the Egyptians before Lower Egypt was inhabited. milk for the time: indeed, were these medicines proper for the distempers to which they direct them to be applied, I should think them worthy of double praise for being able to attain their purpose so easily. But this I do not apprehend to be the case: however, those who have since revised and new-modelled these sentences, have shewn much more of the physician in their prescriptions." * From this long passage we may fairly draw these conclusions: 1. That there was a physic-school at Cnidus: this appears from the sentences collected under its name. 2. That the Cnidian school was derived from the Egyptian this appears from their sole use of evacuants, in all but acute distempers. 3. That it was now of considerable standing; having had a reform in the teaching of more able practitioners. 4. And lastly, which is most to the point, that the physicians of this school were of the clinic sect; it being impossible they should compose such a work as Hippocrates here criticizes, without a constant attendance on the sick-bed: and therefore Hippocrates was not the founder of this sect, as Pliny, and our author after him, supposed. But, for the established state of physic, its study as an art, and its practice as a profession, when Hippocrates made so superior a figure, we have the full evidence of Herodotus, his contemporary; who tells us, that in the time of Darius Hystaspis the physic school at Crotona was esteemed by the Greeks first in reputation; and that, at Cyrene, second ; which both implies, that these were of considerable standing, and that there were many others and if GALEN may be believed, who, though a late writer, was yet a very competent judge, there were many others: so that Hippocrates was so far from being the first that visited sick-beds, and prescribed with success in distempers, that he was not even the first amongst the Greeks. The truth of the matter is this, the divine old man (as his disciples have been wont to call him) so greatly eclipsed all that went before him, that, as posterity esteemed his works the canon, so they esteemed him the father of medicine: And this was the humour of antiquity. The same eminence in poetry made them regard Homer as the founder of his • Οἱ ξυγγράψαντες τὰς ΚΝΙΔΙΑΣ καλεομένας ΓΝΩΜΑΣ, δκοῖα μὲν πάσχουσιν οἱ κάμνοντες ἐν ἑκάστοισι τῶν νουσημάτων, ὀρθῶς ἔγραψαν. καὶ ὁκοίως ἔνια ἀπέβαινεν αὐτέων· καὶ ἄχρι μὲν τουτέων καὶ μὴ ἰητρὸς ἂν δύναιτο ὀρθῶς ξυγγράψαι, εἰ εὖ παρὰ τῶν καμνόντων ἑκάστου πυθοίατο, ὁκοῖα πάσχουσιν· ὁκόσα δὲ προκαταμαθεῖν δεῖ τὸν ἰητρὸν, μὴ λέγοντος τοῦ κάμνοντος, τουτέων τὰ πολλὰ πάρειται· ἄλλα ἐν ἄλλοισι, καὶ ἐπίκαιρα ἔνια εόντα ἐς τέκμαρσιν. Ὁκόταν δὲ ἐς τέκμαρσιν λέγηται ὡς χρὴ ἕκαστα ἰητρεύειν, ἐν τουτέοισι πολλὰ ἑτεροίως γινώσκω, ἢ ὡς ἐκεῖνοι ἐπεξίεσαν· καὶ οὐ μόνον διὰ τοῦτο οὐκ ἐπαινέω, ἀλλ ὅτι καὶ ὀλίγοισι τὸν ἀριθμὸν τοῖσιν ἀκέεσιν ἐχρέοντο· τὰ γὰρ πλεῖστα αὐτέοισιν εἰρέαται, πλὴν τῶν ὀξειῶν νούσων, φάρμακα ελατήρια διδόναι, καὶ ὀῤῥὸν, καὶ γάλα, ἐς τὴν ὥρην πιπίσκειν· ἢν μὲν οὖν ταῦτα ἀγαθὰ ἦν, καὶ ἁρμόζοντα τοῖσι νουσήμασιν, ἐφ ̓ οἷσι παρῄνεον διδόναι, πολὺ ἂν ἀξιώτερα ἐπαίνου ἦν, ὅτι ὀλίγα ἐόντα αὐταρκεά ἐστι· νῦν δὲ οὐχ οὕτως ἔχει· οἱ μέν τοι ὕστερον ἐπιδιασκευάσαντες ἰητρικώτερον δή τι ἐπῆλθον περὶ τῶν προσοιστέων ἑκάστοισιν. † Εγένετο γὰρ ἂν τοῦτο ὅτε πρώτοι μὲν Κροτωνιῆται ἰητροὶ ἐλέγοντο ἀνὰ τὴν Ἑλλάδα εἶναι, δεύτεροι δὲ, Κυρηναῖοι.—Lib. iii. cap. 131. * Meth. Medendi, lib. i. art, though they who penetrate into the perfection of his compositions, understand that nothing is more unlikely. But what is strange in this matter is, that the writer should think it evidence enough to bring in Pliny speaking of Hippocrates as the first amongst the Greeks who prescribed to sick-beds with success, for the confutation of Herodotus (contemporary with Hippocrates) in what he says of the pharmaceutic part of medicine, as an ancient practice in Egypt. But all the writer's errors in this discourse seem to proceed from a wrong assumption, that the diætetic medicine was, in order of time, before the pharmaceutic: and the greater simplicity of the first method seems to have led him into this mistake :-In the days of Pythagoras, says he, the learned began to form rules of diet for the preservation of health; and in this consisted the practice of the ancient Indian physicians; they endeavoured to cure distempers by a diet regimen, but they gave no physic. Hippocrates began the practice of visiting sick-bed patients, and prescribed medicines with success for their distempers. This, I think, was the progress of physic.-I hold the matter to be just otherwise and that, of the three parts of medicine, the CHIRURGIC, the PHARMACEUTIC, and the DIETETIC, the dietetic was the last in use; as the chirurgic was, in all likelihood, the first. In the early ages of long life and temperance, men were still subject to the common accidents of wounds, bruises, and dislocations; this would soon raise surgery into an art: agreeably to this supposition, we may observe, that Sextus Empiricus derives larpòs, a physician, from iòs, a dart or arrow; the first attack upon the human species being of this more violent sort. Nor was pharmacy so far behind as some may imagine; nature itself often eases a too great repletion by an extraordinary evacuation; this natural remedy (whose good effects as they are immediately felt, are easily understood) would teach men to seek an artificial one, when nature was not at hand to relieve. But the very early invention of pharmacy is further seen from that superstition of antiquity, which made medicine the gift of the Gods. For, what medicine do they mean? It could not be setting a fracture, or closing the lips of a wound; much less a regular diet. It could be nothing then but pharmacy; and this, both in the invention and operation, had all the advantages for making its fortune: First, it was not the issue of study, but of chance; the cause of which is out of sight: but what men understand not, they generally ascribe to superior agency. It was believed, even so late as the time of Alexander,* that the Gods continued to enrich the physical dispensatory. Secondly, there was something as extraordinary in the operation as in the invention. Pharmacy is divided into the two general classes of evacuants and alteratives; the most efficacious of CICERO De Divin. lib. ii. cap. 66. these latter, commonly called Specifics, not working by any visible effects of evacuation, do their business like a charm. Thus, as the general notion of the divine original of medicine made the patient very superstitious,* so the secret operation of alteratives inclined the practiser to the same imbecility. Hence it is that so much of this folly hath overrun the art of medicine in all ages. Now the bestowing the origin of pharmacy in this manner, is abundantly sufficient to prove its high antiquity; for the Ancients gave nothing to the Gods of whose original they had any records: but where the memory of the invention was lost, as of seed-corn, wine, writing, civil society, &c. there, the Gods seized the property, by that kind of right, which gives strays to the lord of the manor.† But now the diætetic medicine had a very low original, and a wellknown man for its author; a man worth a whole dozen of heathen gods, even the great HIPPOCRATES himself: and this we learn from the surest evidence, his own writings. In his tract de Veteri Medicina, he expresly says, that MEDICINE was established from the most early times; meaning, as the context shews, Pharmacy: but where he speaks soon after in the same tract of the dietetic medicine (which he calls τέχνη ἡ ἰητρική, as the pharmaceutic above ἰητρική substantively) he says, the ART OF MEDICINE was neither found out in the most early times, nor sought after. § And in his de diæta in acutis, he tells us, That the ancients (meaning all who had preceded him) wrote nothing of diet worthy notice; and that, notwithstanding it was a matter of vast moment, they had intirely omitted it, although they were not ignorant of the numerous subdivisions into the species of distempers, nor of the various shapes and appearances of each. || Hence it appears, that, before the time of Hippocrates, the visiting of sick-beds and prescribing medicines were in practice; but that the diætetic medicine, as an art, was intirely unknown: so that had Pliny called Hippocrates the author of this, instead of the founder of the clinic sect, he had come much nearer to the truth. But without this evidence we might reasonably conclude, even from the nature of the thing, that the dietetic was the latest effort of the art of medicine. For, 1. The cure it performs is slow and tedious, and consequently it would not be thought of, at least not employed, • "Diis primum inventores suos assignavit, et cœlo dicavit ; necnon et hodie multifariam ab oraculis medicina petitur."-PLINII Nat. Hist. lib. xxix. Proœm. †The Rabbins, amongst their other pagan conceits, adopted this; and taught that God himself instructed Adam in the art of medicine;-"Et ductus Adam per omnes Paradisi semitas vidit omne lignum, arbores, plantas, et lapides, et docuit eum Dominus omnem naturam eorum, ad sanandum omnem dolorem et infirmitatem."-R. EBENEZRA. Which, however, shews their opinion of the high antiquity of the art. Η Ἰητρικῇ δὲ πάντα πάλαι ὑπάρχει. Cap. 3. § Τὴν γὰρ ἀρχὴν οὔτ ̓ ἂν εὑρέθη τέχνη ἡ ἰητρική, οὔτ ̓ ἂν ἐζητήθη. - Cap. 5. || Ατὰρ οὐδὲ περὶ διαίτης οἱ ἀρχαῖοι ξυνέγραψαν οὐδὲν ἄξιον λόγου, καί τοι μέγα τοῦτο παρῆκαν τὰς μέν τοι πολυτροπίας τὰς ἐν ἑκάστ τῇσι τῶν νούσων, καὶ τὴν πολυσχιδὲην αὐτέων οὐκ ἠγνόουν.--Cap. 2. |