GREEK MEDICINE

Evening Star, Issue 19318, 3 August 1926, Page 3

GREEK MEDICINE

OTAGO CLASSICAL ASSOCIATIOH ADDRESS BY DR MACDONALD At ilio monthly meeting of •Classical Association, field last evening in the Museum lecture room, xm W. Marshall Macdomid delivered an unusually interesting lecture .on the subject of undent Greek medicine. It is generally assumed, said the lecturer, that tlio practice of medicine m one form or another must naturally be as old art the human nice itself. Ilousscau tells us that early man had a natural tendency to care for the sick, and that medical practice began. with the first cases of sickness or accident. This is open to serious doubt, and it is much more likely that tho. cave manended illnesses mercifully with a club, just as hens peck a sick one to death. The instinct of preservation was applied by the individual only, and when sick animals crawl off into holes it is because they arc only too well aware of the treatment they will receive from their follows. It was probably the development of religions feeling that led gradually to the altruistic treatment of the sick, and nowadays it is' only damaged reputations that are universally treated in Christian countries on the cave-man principle- It is wrong, then, to say, as lloudart docs, that medicine was tho first victory of tho human mind. Quintilian says that it is impossible to believe that the genius of man could have invented medicine. Cicero’s statement lis still ampler—the medical art is the sacred gift of. the immortal gods. Winy says that divine honors wore granted to Hippocrates,; who himself said the common belief was that his art was of divine origin, hut he did not actually subscribe to.the belief. These views must have given great comfort to indifferent practitioners of medicine, but they have no other value.

According to ancient writings tlie Babylonians, and before them the Chaldeans, practised a sort of medicine by a system of purifications, sacrifices, a.nd invocations, but this was carried on solely by tlho priests. In view of modern psycho-analysis it is interesting to note that tihe Chaldeans relied largely on the interpretation of dreams for diagnosis and prognosis. Herodotus tells us that the Babylonians had their sick carried into the public places, and anyone who had had the same malady, or, ho adds, anyone who had seen sonlcone with the sumo malady, aided tlho patient with his counsel and advice. The modern practice is to do tliris at bridge parties or to hunt down the sick in their private dwellings. Herodotus tells ns also that the Persians isolated all those suffering from leprosy, and they allowed no excreta to be discharged into rivers—not because it was insanitary, but because they worshipped the river gods; and this is not the only occasion on which religion stum Med on an important sanitary law. In Persia also there was a sliding scale of fees. Thus a priest escaped if ho gave a blessing in return, while the governor of a province had to pay four oxen, or, if bis wife was ill, one camel. Tbo ancient Egyptians wore skilled in medicine. In Genesis wo are told that Joseph ordered bis servants, flic physicians, to embalm the body of bis father Jacob. Moses studied medicine under the Pharaohs, and, to very good purpose, as is evidenced by In's injunction against shellfish, which breed fevers, and against pork, which is often “measly.” In Egypt specialisation was carried to a high degree. The medicine of tbo Hebrews is fully described in the Pentateuch,' especially by Leviticus, who lays down excellent rules for the care of foyer patients and leprosy; but it is obvious that lie included manv skin diseases under this term. Ho-also isolated lepers. The most noticeable thing about Hebrew medicine is that their therapeutics depended almost entirely on hygienic principles, and not on drugs. “Wine,” said one of the rabbis, “ is the best remedy,” and it is only in places where wine is unprocurable that it is necessary to resort to pharmaceutical remedies.

Wo ni'o told in Scripture, continued Dr Macdonald, that Kane; Solomon was versed in the knowledge of plants from tho humble hyssop to the cedar of Lebanon, and Josephus says that lie used this skill for _ composing remedies. In India the \edic system of medicine consisted chiefly of hymns and invocations, and it was with the Brahminical books, which date from tho Christian ora, that medical science began. They had eight classes of specialists—one being that of preventive medicine. For prognosis they consulted the stars and the flight of birds._ If these failed they poured some oil on water, and if tho oil floated the prognosis was good, so that a bad prognosis must have been rare, the Brahmins evidently not being pessimists. In China medical writings date back to 2706 8.C., in which year Hoang-ti wrote a treatise on anatomy, in which ho urges the importance of studying tho pulse. Chinese physicians vaccinated for smallpox in the tenth century, and they did it in tho nose, which must have been very unpleasant. According to Cicsar, the Druids offered up human sacrifices in cases of illness. Better, adds Plutarch, if they had had no gods at all. There is no doubt that the ancient Gauls and Britons, if wc can believe tho recorded accounts of their' habits, must have been the most repulsive among tho nations of antiquity. Their method of sacrifice was to knock tho victim on the solar plexus with a club, and then the patient’s progress was foretold by tho convulsive movements of the limbs during the death agony. Greek medicine differs from all previous systems by evidencing from the very beginning an insistence on freedom of thought as opposed to magic and religious superstition. .Even in Greek mythology there is an attempt at therapeutics. Melatnpus is have cured the daughters of the King of Argos, who were mad, by giving them draughts of milk containing hellebore. There is no doubt that modern scientific medicine, had its origin in ancient Greece, which was tho cradle of art and literature. In Greece, also, it was customary to mako the doctor tho butt of all sorts of witicisins. .In fact, many of tho most popular of modern anti-medical pleasantries arc to bo found in tho Greek writers. Tho joke about doctors burying their mistakes is somewhere in Plutarch, but I could not lay my hands on it. Plutarch had many medical stories. A doctor who had examined a patient said : “ There is nothing wrong with you.” “ Just so,” replied the patient. “ That is because I am not in tho habit of consulting you.” A man was asked why he spoke ill of a doctor whom ho had never consulted. “ If I had consulted him j would not now he speaking cither good or evil of anyone.” Aristophanes said, bluntly, that all doctors were a gang of swindlers. But, although the profession of medicine lias to pub up with so many gibes, it is probably, even from tho utilitarian point of view, the profession that we could least afford to do without. As might be expected, Greek medicine reached its culminating glory in the a.ge of Pericles. There w : ore previous systems of medicine in Greece—in the time of Pythagoras, when health was supposed to depend on numbers and harmony—a view still hold by the Yogis of Tibet. Homer has quite an extraordinary knowledge of anatomy and medical lore, and he mentions the use of iron for anaemia. But in all systems before that of-Hip-pocrates the practice of medicine was

intimately connected with religion, tho priests were physicians and the therapeutics were almost entirely canonical. With tho coming of Hippocrates all that was changed, and the foundations of medicine based on accurate observation wore laid. He was one or the greatest men that ever lived, and it is difficult to overestimate the debt tha u tho world owes to this wonderful Greek physician. He was a man not only of great wisdom, but also of great boaiuy of character. Apart altogether from the fact that ho was the hrst to base the practice of medicine on the study and observation of disease, his ethical teaching was not short ol sublime, and it was entirely duo to his humane ic-n-ard for his patients and his deep conscientiousness in his dealings with his colleagues that the profession ol medicine was placed on the ethical pedestal that it has been the duty and the pride of all succeeding generations of Petitioners to retain for it. ie k have been many modern physicians of groat ability, great powers of observation ami reasoning, groat dignity and beauty of character. 1 hero has never been one who in these: nutters was worthy to loosen tho latohot of Tlipprocatcs’s shoe. . The lecturer then traced the course and development of Greek medicine at ieiudh, showing that Hippocrates gave ioduio for goitre and healed wounds without suppuration, and t iat hc ; ]l " 1 an ultimate knowledge both of medicine and of operative surgery. J ho works of Heroplulus Galon Cclsas, and others were, also dealt witn. Continuing, Dr Macdonald said that the Arabs kept alive the Greek tradition through tho Middle Ages, and prepared for its blossoming anew at the Renaissance. When they drove back Louts VII. after the First Crusade they built a. memorial hospital in Damascus, and one of the wards was an eye ward which wc are now trying to get m Dunedin in 1926. One of the earliest gifts of Eastern medicine to the West was powdered mummy, and also u.snea, which was made from the moss scraped from tho .skulls of criminals banging on the gallows, and bad great virtue in certain diseases. These two precious medicaments were, in common use in Europe till well on in tho eighteenth century. One Aral) aphorism is worth recalling i There arc two kinds of .surgical operations—those which benefit the patient, and those which usually kill him. The last link in the chain of Greek medicine is furnished by tho famous Salernian School in Italy. They granted degrees for which there was a seven years’ course, their examinations were very difficult, and they admitted women graduates, for whom we are told the professors had a high esteem. One of them, tho matron Trotula had a very great reputation. They had to take oath not to n.sk fees from tho poor, and not to share the profits of tho druggists. The penalty for practising without a license was imprisonment, and the prisoner’s goods wore all sold by auction. For noxious drugs or love philtres or magic drinks the penalty was death, and there was a strict law against allowing the fluid from flaxmills from passing into rivers or streams. One of the surgeons of the Salernian School, Theodoric - , used iodine for goitre and scrofula, mercury for skin diseases, he ligatured blood vessels, and. above all, he insisted that wounds could heal without pus or matter if they were cleansed with wine and drawn .together and bandaged. In these things ho rebelled against the authority of Galen, and went back to Hippocrates, with whom he joined in forestalling the great work of Lister. One of the products of the Salernian School was a long poem, the llegimen Sanitate. This contains tho wellknown couplet:—Use three physicians still—first, Dr Quiet; next, Dr Merryman; and, third, Dr Diet. Another Salernian treatise is the Do Adventu Medici, or the doctor’s -visit. In this we find: II you can make out nothing,

say there is an obstruction of the liver. If he replies: It is my legs or my head, doctor, repeat that, it comes from tho liver, and be sure to use the word obstruction, for patients do not understand it, which is very important. Finally, if you are not getting your fees, order the patient to take alum instead of salt with his meat, and that will mako him conic out in spots all over. Arnald, in introducing his third book, says: “In this book 1 propose to deal with the diseases of women, and as women are, for the most part, poisonous _ creatures, I will then deal with the bites of venomous beasts.” The Anglo-Saxon proverb is not so bitter; “Against a woman’s chatter take at night fasting a radish, and that day the chatter cannot harm thee.” It is obvious that neither tho ethics nor the chivalry of tho Salernian School followed tho Hippocratic tradition. One interesting fact is that tho Saleruians used a sort of amcsthetic for operations. _ This was what was known as tho spongia somnifera, and consisted of a sponge soaked in tho juices of the poppy, mulberry, hyosyamus, lettuce, hemlock, mandragora, and ivy. This was placed over the patient’s mouth, and inhaled until ho fell asleep. Most of these plants are now known to ■•outain hypnotic alkaloids-. It is curious that this practice should ever have been given up. It is possible that the church may have forbidden it just as the Presbyterian Church tried hard to prevent tho use of chloroform, especially in childbirth, on the ground that its use was contrary to the primal curse laid on women. It is curious, also, that there should bo such a silence in literature on this subject. Shakespeare speaks of “ mandragora and all tho drowsy syrups of the world,” hut not in a surgical connection. A hearty vote of thanks to tho lecturer was carried on the motion of the chairman (Mr W. J. Morrell At tho close of the. lecture Mr W, Fcls exhibited a coin of the island of Cos, tho birthplace of Hippocrates, with the head of Asclepins on the obverse, and on the reverse his slaft and serpent. Tho coin, which is of tho fourth century, me., is in excellent preservation.