Books for Study and Leisure and Hours

Kai Tiaki : the journal of the nurses of New Zealand, Volume VII, Issue 2, 1 April 1914, Page 98

Books for Study and Leisure and Hours

" Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine," by James Sands Elliott, M.D., Ch.B. Edin. This book, by a New Zealand author well known to many of our readers, has a special interest on that account. Apart from that interest, however, the little volume well repays perusal. It deals with, as its title indicates, the very early days of medical treatment and gives a brief outline of the history of its development and of those ancient practitioners who laid the foundations of modern medicine and surgery. What is most astonishing to those who have not read of this subject before, is the marvellous similarity of much of the treatment which is still carried out. Many operations were performed m those early days, some hundreds of years before Christ, which are still performed by modern surgeons, and even the instruments used were similar. The names of diseases, drugs and instruments are still the same. Before the Greeks and the Romans it is stated that the Egyptians were proficient m the healing art, and from them the Greeks borrowed their knowledge, afterwards passing it on to the Romans. Aesculapius was supposed to have lived m the thirteenth century before Christ and was deified as the Greek God of Medicine. Hygeia was supposed to be his daughter and was the Goddess of Health. Temples to Aesculapius were erected many centuries later and these temples were visited by the sick for treatment long before hospitals were established. In remarking on the decline m medicine m the Middle Ages the author says that " we have to come to comparatively recent times before we find the skill and

knowledge of the ancients equalled, while it is only at the present day that they are rapidly being excelled." The whole is written in an easy, pleasant style, and much information is giver in short space. We would recommend nurses to read this book, although no record is given of how the helpers of these old surgeons and physicians (probably slaves as many of the physicians were) carried out their part of the work of healing.