Transcriber's Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
| VOL. I. | JANUARY, 1886. | No. 3. |
It may not be inappropriate to give in your journal a briefsketch of the history of medicine, by the consideration of whichwe may come to a better appreciation of our present standpointas medical men. We may also the better understand howmuch we, as medical men, and the world at large, are indebtedto the methodical, plodding workers of the past in the field ofinquiry pertaining to the nature and cure of disease. Suchreview may have the effect of stimulating medical men to morecareful observation and the recording the results of observationsthat they may be given to others for mutual benefit.
Science may be defined as “classified knowledge.” But allour knowledge is based on experience and observation. Medicalscience, like other sciences, taking the definition of SirJohn Herschel, is “the knowledge of many, orderly and98methodically digested and arranged so as to become attainableby one.”
In all cases art and observation precede and beget science,and give origin to its gradual construction. But soon science,so built up, begins to reflect new light upon its parents—observationand art—helps them onward, expands the range ofvision, corrects their errors, improves their methods and suggestsnew ones. The stars were mapped out and counted bythe shepherds watching their flocks by night, long beforeastronomy assumed any scientific form.
From the earliest ages the pains and disorders of the humanbody must have arrested men's anxious attention and claimedtheir succor. The facts observed, both as to hurts and diseases,and as to their attempted remedying, were handed down bytradition or by record from generation to generation in continuallyincreasing abundance, and out of the repeated survey andcomparison of these has grown the recognition of certain lawsof events and rules of action, which together constitute “medicalscience.”
There is good reason for the belief that Egypt was thecountry in which the art of medicine, as well as the other artsof civilized life, was first cultivated with any degree of success,the offices of the priest and the physician being probably combinedin the same person. In the writings of Moses there arevarious allusions to the practice of medicine amongst the Jews,especially with reference to the diagnosis and treatment of leprosy.The priests were the physicians, and their treatmentmainly aimed at promoting cleanliness and preventing contagion.The same practice is approved by the light of latestscience.
Chiron, the Centaur, is said to have introduced the art ofmedicine amongst the Greeks, but the early history of the artis entirely legendary. Æsculapius appears in Homer as anexcellent physician of human origin; in the later legends heb