THE ART OF HEALING.

Gisborne Times, Volume LIX, Issue 9574, 27 July 1923, Page 3

THE ART OF HEALING.

FROM PRIEST TO SURGEON! DEBffi TO ANCIENT GREECE. LESSONS OF THE AGES. The debt which modern medical science owes to ancient Greece formed the subject of an instructive and interesting address by Mr Kenneth Mackenzie at a meeting of the Auckland Institute. Professor H. W. Segar presided. In outlining the practice of the art of healing among primitive peoples, Mr Mackenzie spoke rf the close association, from earliest days, of medicine with religion and with magic, an association that still persisted in modern civilisations. Tiie mind of the primeval savage was incapable of the conception of disease and death as being produced by natural causes. Thus the great part of the treatment was. spiritual, the smaller physical part consisting of herbal simples, and the crude surgical treatment of injuries. / . j ANCIENT EGYPTIAN METHODS, i In’ Egyptian civilisation, which made its appearance about 5000 8.C., medicine was entirely in the hands of the priests, continued'the lecturer. There was scarcely any evidence of surgery, the most noteworthy achievement of that period being the knowledge of the antiseptic and preservative method used in embalming the dead. J.t was probable that tho early Greeks acquired some knowledge of both medicine and chemistry from the ' Egyptians. | The first outstanding name in Greek

medical history was that of /Esculajmis, in whoso honor temples were erected, which became famous centres of healing, and .whoso treatment was closely similar in form to methods of suggestive healing carried on under the auspices of various religious bodies in later times and in the present day. In an era which combined medicine and philosophy, came the first-lamed philosopher-physician Empedocles, or Sicily, whose theory focussed interest on the vascular system, the resulting dissections of this stage giving the first limit of human dissection. THE “FATHER OF MEDICINE.”

In the early part of the fourth century, 8.C., came Hippocrates, father of medicine and greatest of physicians, whose advent marked the beginning of European medicine proper. He,, separated medicine from philosophy and from the wonder-working of religious magic, and also inaugurated tlio practice of close and accurate observation and record of the phenomena of disease. Hippocrates was described as the physician of experience and eommunsonse, and the Hippocratic writings and treatises on fractures and dislocations held their own up to very recent times, as did his work on the surgery of the head and indications for tlio operation of trephining. His treatment of wounds was characterised by its simplicity and the emphasis laid on scrupulous cleanliness, and he was also the first advocate of the great principle of rest in the healing of in.iu ries.

The oblivion into which these simple primary principles passed in succeeding ages was the cause of incalculable human suffering. Drugs were not much in evidence in the Hippocratic. method. In later centuries, enormously-coinplicated drugging took place, reaching its zenith in the 17th century, while, in the present day there was again, a well-marked tendency in the medical profession to less drug treatment. With the Greeks massage and gymnastics played an important part in treatment, as they are again doing new. THE EXPERIMENTS OF GALEN. In the centuries following Hippocrates, Aristotle, Horophilus, and Erasistratus, and Sorauus and Ephesus, each gave something to medical science, continued the lecturer, the latter producing a treatiso on obstetrics, which set the high-water mark in this branch of medicine for 1500 years.

Li the second century, A.D., appeared Galen, the greatest Greek physician after Hippocrates, and the founder of the experimental method and research, which later achieved such success in the hands of such men as William Harvey, John Hunter and Pasteur. Galen’s influence upon medicine was a. curious one, for though he added much, he aiso practically stopped all progress for 14 centuries. For the plain, practical method of the Hippocratic school, lie substituted a dogmatic theoretical system of medical philosophy. One of his gravest practical errors was that tiie formation of pus was a necessary part of the healing of wounds, an error which was not fully overthrown until the advent of Lister’s 'antiseptic method 50 years ago._ - ‘ A\ ith Galen, came the end cf the Greek period in medicine, and the beginning of a long retrograde phase in Europe, during which the Hippocratic woi'Ls and much of the best of Galen was lost. In the passing of the centuries these were gradually reintroduced, and with tho great anatomical revival which began in Italy in the sixteenth century, cani£. the starting point of the modern epoch. Much of the Grecian teaching still held to-day, concluded tho lecturer, and lo it. could he ascribed the inspiration of the great figures in medicine in latter centuries.