its rivals. In one important branch of the practice of their art, the priests seem to have excelled the practitioners of modern days. They always took their fee before they gave advice:-though indeed Esculapius has always been a wise and provident god, and taken good care of his ministers. The patient laid his gifts on the altar; and was then put to bed on a ram-skin rug, which had the power of inducing celestial visions! When he was supposed to be asleep, the priest, clothed like Esculapius, with some young females, who passed for his daughters, but were in fact actresses and figurantes educated for the purpose, entered and informed the persons of their complaint, and the method of cure. The most celebrated of these temples were those of Epidaurus, Pergamus, Cos, and Cnidus. Cnidus gave birth to Euryphron, who published the Cnidian Sentences; and from Cos proceeded the true father of rational physic-the wise, the humane, the virtuous Hippocrates.

When the delusions of priestcraft were discovered, and the power of the Asclepiadæ destroyed, the philosophers, who began to flourish about the sixth century, took the vacant chair of Medicine, and certainly rescued it from sacerdotal ignorance and imposture; but as each had his own favourite theory, to that the laws of the healing art were bound. Pythagoras referred the formation of diseases and the laws of nature to the power of numbers. He and his followers believed, that they had discovered in different operations of nature that order which numbers must follow, in order to produce their recurrence at stated intervals. Democritus referred them to the figure and position of the atoms of matter. Heraclitus shewed how they were modified by the creative fire of the universe. These hypotheses extended to the evolution of matter, the origin of diseases, and the changes achieved by death. Empedocles supposed the muscles were composed of the four elements in four equal parts, and that the nerves, when cooled by the external air, become the nails; that tears arose from a fusion of blood, and the bones from a mixture of earth and water. Eudoxus, Epicharnus, and others, adopted the opinions of the Italian School, founded by Pytha goras. Among them all, no name stood so high as that of Acron of Agrigentum in Sicily? He has been called the father of empirics, as rejecting all theories and system; he founded Medicine on experience alone; and reduced all reasonings to the appreciation of different symptoms, and to the discovery of analogies. Such were the respective changes which Medicine underwent in the early periods of its history. Placed at first,' as an elegant and philosophical writer expresses himself, in the hands of the poets, it exhibited only an assemblage of beautiful images or refined sentiments; while in the hands of the priests, it adopted the vague language and mysterious tone of superstition; and in the hands of these primitive philosophers, its scattered, confused, and indigested materials were combined, and formed into more or less regular and more or less perfect systems. But it usurped the principles of many other sciences, which were themselves but in a crude state; it shared in their errors, which proved the more injurious to it, as these sciences, for the most part, had little connexion with it. We may even venture to assert, that it made the complete round of the false systems which prevailed in the different branches of human knowledge, and which succeeded each other by turns. At length, in the eightieth olympia, and in the little island of Cos, Hippocrates* appeared.

* Dr. Bostock's account of the medical logic and practice of this great physician, is written with taste and judgment, p. 28, &c.

His father was a physician; and indeed Medicine had been in the hands of his family for seventeen generations. Surrounded,' says Cabanis, 'from infancy with all the objects of his studies; instructed in eloquence and philosophy by the most celebrated masters; having his mind enriched with the largest collection of observations which could at that time have existed; and endowed, in fine, by nature with a genius which was at once penetrating and comprehensive, bold and prudent, he commenced his career under the most favourable auspices, and pursued it during a period of more than eighty years, with that degree of renown which was equally due to his talents and to the greatness of his virtuous character.'

The period in which a man of genius appears is of the utmost importance; as it may either give that genius room to expand, or stifle it in ignorance and superstition; it may become a splendid but useless gift, or it may be an invaluable possession, as time and circumstance allow. Many were the advantages which surrounded the pupil of Cos, when he first applied the powers of his genius to the purpose of diminishing the evils which afflict humanity. Euryphron had published his Cnidian Sentences; Herodicus had revived gymnastic Medicine; the usual diseases were observed, and general remedies ascertained. Venesection, emetics, cathartics, bathing, operating with the knife, and cautery, were familiarly practised; and although false theories, and the influence of superstition, retarded the progress of truth and the improvement of science, yet a marked advance in knowledge was visible, and the dawn of a clearer day began to brighten on the rising science, when Hippocrates appeared to raise the Coan School to a lasting and undeniable pre-eminence over all its rivals. His first advantage, besides being in the seventeenth degree the lineal descendant of Esculapius, he derived from having been born amid the future object of his studies, and being familiar from his cradle with materials that were to exercise his future judgment. From his parents he received the elementary notions of medical science; by viewing diseases he learned to distinguish them, and the virtues and uses of Medicine became familiar to him.

Hippocrates was born one of the few favourites of Nature; and his parent smiled when she bestowed on him some of her choicest gifts. He was endowed equally with soundness and temperance of judgment, and those inventive powers which mark the genius of the possessor, which anticipate the judgments, and appear almost to claim the discoveries of posterity. He brought the science back into the natural channel of rational experience; freed it from false systems, founded it upon a solid basis, and made it, as he says-philosophical. His true method of reasoning is developed in his History of Epidemics* and Book of Aphorisms. The former contains descriptions of the most severe diseases, and affords rules for judging and discriminating them. The latter has been regarded as a model of grandeur of conception, and precision of style. The true path of improvement and discovery was now found; observations were collected and preserved; deductions were formed from facts into general rules; and the true analytical philosophy was employed, by which new ideas were developed, and comprehensive views of science opened. In fact, a habit of

• We wonder that no one who has mentioned the writings of Hippocrates has remarked how entertaining as well as instructive is the treatise of Emidniwv. It throws light on the domestic habits of the Greeks; and in the names, situations, and residence of the patients it gives such spirit and liveliness to the descriptions, that the nonprofessional reader will peruse it with pleasure.

GENT. MAG. VOL. IV.

C

graces

observation, at once delicate and sound, formed the groundwork of the still more difficult art of referring the results to general views, and detailing them with precision. No other writer, it is said, without exception, initiates us so far into the knowledge of Nature, or teaches us to interrogate her with that wise caution and that scrupulous attention, which can alone enable us to trace from her answers those principles and rules which must be recognized as genuine. To this mastery over science, Hippocrates brought all the graces of the most polite and refined literature.* Studying under the celebrated Gorgias, whose lectures on eloquence at Athens attracted the most enthusiastic admiration, he soon learnt how much the of a finished style contribute to the success of truth, how closely language and thought are united, and the art of reasoning is dependent on the words in which it is conveyed. 'It was,' says the author to whom we have before referred, and to whose masterly sketch of the History of Medicine we are so much indebted, in this excellent school that Hippocrates received the elements of that simple and masculine style which is peculiar to him-a style perfect in its kind, and particularly well adapted to the sciences by the clearness of its terms and the force of its expression; and not less remarkable for the liveliness of its images, and for that rapidity which seems only to glance on the different objects, but which in reality investigates them all thoroughly, by arresting and comparing their true distinguishing features. If history furnishes us with a just account of this celebrated orator, we may conclude that Hippocrates really owes to him the valuable talent of embellishing his thoughts without the aid of extraneous ornaments, and of preserving his language in that mean degree of elegance which perhaps is the only description of style† allowable to the physician, interrupted as he is in his solitary studies by the daily avocations of his profession. Though advanced in age, Hippocrates does not scruple to confess that he was yet far from having carried the theory and practice of his art to that degree of perfection of which they are susceptible; and he declares that in the course of a long life, which had been devoted to the service of his fellow-creatures, and which had not passed without some degree of renown,

*It is decided that Hippocrates never dissected. See Bostock's History, p. 29, with his authorities. But in his writings we see the first traces of physiology. On his genuine works see ditto, p. 31. The principles of Hippocrates are-1. Attention to the operations of nature; 2. Curing disease by inducing contrary action; 3. The doctrine of critical evacuations. His Materia Medica was very copious, but all of vegetable articles. Erasistratus and Herophilus, physicians of Alexandria under the Ptolemies, are said to have been the first who dissected the human subject. See Bostock, p. 47. The separation of physician and surgeon and apothecary commenced at this time, on the great schism of the Dogmatists and Empirics. See Dr. Bostock's judicious observations, p. 51-54.

See some remarks on the style of Hippocrates, and in its difference from that of other celebrated writers of Greece, in Cabanis, p. 389.

It seems doubtful whether the account given in the oration of the disputation ascribed to Thessalus, as regards the advice of Hippocrates during the plague at Athens, is genuine. Thucydides in his detailed description does not mention him. See what Cabanis observes on the subject, p. 76. Hippocrates was born about the 80th Olympiad; the plague raged in the 87th, consequently he was only 30 years old. Whether his experience at that age entitled him to stand between the living and the dead, when all else were stupefied with despair,

Cessere magistri

Phyllirides, Chiron, Amythaoniusque Melampus,'

and even Medicine herself was silent, according to the magnificent language of the great philosophical poet- Stat tacito Medicina timore,' cannot now be ascertained.

Yet

he had been oftener blamed for misconduct than praised for success. no one was ever more deserving of happiness than Hippocrates; no one ever distinguished his sojourn upon earth by more signal services, or by the constant exercise of more exalted virtues, and no one ever formed to himself more sublime ideas of the duties of his profession. These we may find sketched and compressed, as it were, in the oath of his school; in several passages of his writings he has recorded them in the truly affecting language of virtue and truth; and he practised them with sentiments of benevolence, which should render his memory as much cherished and beloved, as his genius and his works have been respected and admired.' We have been so delightfully engaged in the account of this great physician, that we must hasten with winged steps over the remainder of our little history, referring to Dr. Bostock's judicious and well-written work for a more full and detailed account. When medical men were permitted 'to practise at Rome, * and when luxury had multiplied the forms and increased the terrors of disease, and when the old Domestic Medicine and Family Physician's Guide, practised by Cato the Censor and other ancient gentlemen on the bodies of their slaves, were superseded by a demand for a more refined knowledge and for a more perfect practice, Greece was looked to as the parent of the arts of life, and Asclepiadest appeared among others to confer a fresh lustre on his profession by the justness of his views, the extent of his information, and the splendour of his eloquence. From him arose the methodic system of physic, of which Themison was said to be the founder, whose principles may be found explained in the works of Cælius Aurelianus, and who kept a middle course between the Dogmatists and Empirics: they opposed the numeral pathology of Hippocrates, and traced the cause of disease to the solidss—a doctrine that has been gaining ground to the present day. The School of Themison § became divided into some minor sects, among whom the Pneumatics acquired considerable celebrity, from the name of a very eminent practitioner, and beautiful writer, Aretæus the Cappadocian. He is classed among the Pneumatics or Eclectics according as different views of his sagacious system are taken. About this time the celebrated Roman writer on Medicine, Celsus ||, is supposed to have flourished. He is the first native Roman physician whose name has come down to us; and whose works prove that in his time the capital operarations of surgery were known and practised, and the formulæ of his Pharmacy were both correct and scientific. Dr. Bostock conceives that

Pliny says the Romans were without physicians for 600 years. The plague was stopt by the Dictator driving a nail into a post; and other similarly simple remedies rendered doctors superfluous.

† Asclepiades resolved all diseases into obstruction of the pores. See Bostock, p.. 61. He divided diseases into chronic and acute.

Quot Themison ægros autumno occiderit uno.—Juv. Sat.

§ See Dr. Bostock on the subject, p. 70, &c.

|| It has remained for us, who are not among the Doctores Medici, to point out that Trituration, or breaking down the stone in the bladder, supposed to be a discovery of our days, was known to Celsus, and practised in his time.-Vide Lib. vii. c. 26, s. 3. 'Si quando is [calculus] major non videtur, nisi rupta cervice, extrahi posse, findendus est. Cujus repertor Ammonius, qui ob id λorouos cognominatus est. Id hoc modo fit. Uncus injicitur calculo, sic ut facile eum conclusum quoque teneat, ne is retro revolvatur. Tum ferramentum adhibetur crassitudinis modica, prima parte tenui, sed retusa, quod admodum calculo, et ex altera parte ictum, findat. Magna cura habita, ne aut ad ipsam vesicam ferramentum perveniat, aut calculi tractura ne quid incidat.” -Why is the word Lithotrity introduced? Lithotomy is the proper term, not for cutting the bladder, but the stone.

Celsus was a physician by profession, but who devoted part of his time and attention to the cultivation of literature and general science.

After a long interval, in which errors accumulated, in proportion as theories and assumptions took the place of observation and a patient examination of nature, the illustrious name of Galen is announced. He was the physician of Marcus Aurelius, and in his works we may peruse with interest an account of some of the disorders with which that humane, enlightened, and philosophic emperor was afflicted. Endowed," says Cabanis," with a genius sufficiently comprehensive to embrace all the sciences, and to cultivate them all with equal success, he even in early youth gave proofs of uncommon capacity, and, while pursuing his youthful studies, began to perceive the futility of the prevailing systems. Dissatisfied with what his masters taught him as incontrovertible truths, and as the immutable principles of the art, he read Hippocrates' works, and was struck as it were at once with a new light. In comparing them with nature, his astonishment and admiration redoubled, and Hippocrates and Nature henceforth became the only preceptors to whose instructions he would listen. He undertook the task of commenting on the writings of the father of Medicine: he presented his opinions in various lights in which they had not been regarded: he repeated his observations, he extended and supported them with all the aid which philosophy and natural science were capable of affording him, either by the simple comparison of facts, or by the collection of different theories, or by the combination of different methods of reasoning. In short, Galen revived the Hippocratic system of medicine, and communicated to it a degree of lustre which it did not possess in its primitive simplicity. But at the same time it must be confessed that what it gained in his hands, had more the appearance of gloss and ornament than of more solid acquisition. The observations which had been collected, and the rules which had been traced by Hippocrates, in assuming a more splendid and systematic form, lost much of their original purity. Nature, whom the Coan physician had always followed with so much accuracy and caution, became obscured, and in a manner stifled by the foreign pomp of different sciences and dogmas; and the art of medicine, overcharged, as it was, with subtle and superfluous rules, only entangled itself in a number of new and unnecessary difficulties. Bordeu compares Boerhaave to Asclepiades, and he may indeed have found some features of similitude between these two celebrated physicians. But the character of Galen* bears a much stronger resemblance to that of the Leyden Professor; both appropriated to themselves the knowledge of the age in which they lived, and both endeavoured to apply it to medicine. In reforming the latter on great and comprehensive plans, they attempted to combine with it a variety of doctrines which are entirely foreign to it, or which at most bear to it, relations of an insulated and merely accessory nature. Both were desirous to enrich their system of physic, with every thing which they knew besides. Thence it comes that, while they simplified with method, though often in a very unequal manner, the general views which should govern its system of instruction, they have, nevertheless, left a great task for their successors to accomplish-the task of separating with accuracy many just and beautiful ideas from the hypothetical dogmas which disfigure them, and which the order itself of their con

*Consult Dr. Bostock's view of Galen's merits, acquirements, &c. cap. v. p. 83.