ANCIENT AND MODERN MEDICINE.* TRE earliest beginnings of medicine are
doubtless those rudimentary instincts which we can observe any day among animals. The dog, for instance, selects one or two grasses which he eats whenever he has time and opportunity, and the earnest manner and determination with which he performs the somewhat tedious process is a convincing proof of its value. He is also passionately fond of horse-hoof parings, and they are said to be a prevention of distemper. A striking instance of adaptation of instinct to circumstances will suffice to show that one of the properties of the simple he eats is well known to the dog. We recollect dosing a terrier and a dachshund with an ill-flavoured drug. The terrier rushed off, and tore up grass by mouthfuls with a result that may be imagined ; the dachshund, with his Blower instincts and ill-adapted mouth, gave up the attempt in despair, and with offended dignity retired to the decent obscurity of a wood. Here we may remark that, had he over-eaten himself, he would not have availed himself of such a retreat. Animals seem, indeed, to lack the power of restraint, eating again and again what invariably makes them ill; nor do they exercise any judgment in eating poisonous shrubs or frees. Donkeys may be an exception. It would be interesting to know if the habit of dosing themselves is more developed in the older domesticated breeds of dogs. Who can doubt that every bird and beast and fish knows of something that is both at- tractive and medicinally valuable to it ? Even surgery is not unknown to birds, they being alone provided with an apparatus adapted for bandaging, if we except the ele- phant. Wounded snipe have been found with splints of feathers and bandages of grasses round their broken legs. There is thus no reason why man should at the beginning lack those rudiments of the healing art that his fellow-creatures practise. We know now that prehistoric man performed surgical operations that we, with our modern instruments and immeasurably more complete knowledge, regard as serious and difficult. Neolithic man practised tre- panning with success, and did many things as marvellous; greatly assisted, no doubt, by the primitive health of his patients. The Greeks and Egyptians, wrapped in their own conceit, proclaimed themselves benefactors of the human race ; much philosophy and much medicine we owe to them, doubtless, but also an incredible amount of specious and dangerous method, which has survived almost to our * The Origin and Growth of the Healing Art, By Edward Berdoo. London Swan Sonnensohoin and O. day. Savage races, meanwhile, for ages have practised the simple surgery of common-sense and the natural remedies of daily life, in addition to inoculation, trepanning, bleeding, and operations in child-bed. We may, perhaps, look upon the bone. setter of the day as a type of the Neolithic surgeon, for his skill, provided his patients possess rude health and the fracture or the sprain be not outside his knowledge of anatomy, is, perhaps, more quickly effective than that of the most learned of surgeons.
Having started his history with animal medicine, Mr. Bercloe treats in their order, Egyptian, Jewish, Assyrian, and Hindoo medicine, and that of other Eastern Empires. None of these take up much space. Then comes Greek and Roman medicine. As far as surgery is concerned, we may consider Roman, certainly later Roman, medicine as the beginning of the modern science. Such remains as the once fashionable Pompeii has furnished, seem to show that many niceties of the surgeon's art were simply rediscovered within the last few centuries. In fact, the history of the healing art presents a remarkable series of retrogressions ; successive schools, Greek, Roman, and Medimval, rose, flourished, advancing some par- ticular operation or treatment, and then decayed, and their title to fame was forgotten. Until an exact knowledge of physiology and pathology was obtained, we cannot wonder at this ; indeed, it may be questioned if medicine, popularly regarded as a healing art, advanced at all from the first cen- turies of our epoch, lacking as it did those vital truths of the human economy, until these sciences had made some progress.
Much has come down to us concerning the Greek and Roman schools of medicine. They were more or less at the mercy of philosophers ; we use the word in its most compre- hensive sense, for though no man would deny the value of thoughtful discussion to a science which rested on no sounder sources of knowledge than theory and hypothesis, the absolute insecurity of life under such a system is evident, Now and then a bright spot appeared,—some physician who, gained fame for undoubted skill and successful diagnoses. But one shudders to think of the dangers a patient underwent when suffering from a disease that puzzled the doctors. In those days, too, wrangles took place at the sick man's bedside between consulting physicians, so that the helpless patient suffered the additional torture of hearing the proposed remedies. In earlier Roman times, the gladiators no doubt provided capital "preparations," and the surgeons must have regarded them with eager eyes.
Oculists were in bad repute in Martial's time. "The blear- eyed. Hyla,s," he says in a satire, "would have paid you six- pence, 0 Quintus ; one eye is gone, he will still pay you threepence ; make haste and take it, brief is your chance, when he is blind he will pay you nothing." Pliny tells us what income the more fashionable physicians made. Some had an income of 250,000 sesterces, about 22,000. Quintus Stertinius condescended to take 500,000 sesterces from the Emperor. He could have made 100,000 more by private- practice ; and he and his brother left a fortune of nearly a quarter-of-a-million of our money. Galen's fee for curing the wife of the Consul Boethius was about £400; and Manlius Cornutus, according to Pliny, paid 22,000 for the cure of a skin-disease. A modern writer, however, does not think the average physician made more than enough to keep himself. The status of the medical profession was fairly well defined. in Rome. There were district medical officers, who were allowed to practise, but had to attend the poor gratuitously. Imperial physicians, archiatri pcaatini, were the prototypes of the "physician-extraordinary."
Galen, in Hadrian's time, kid the foundation of a new school, and it would be no exaggeration to say that his work and his Ivritings, combining as they did all that was good in other schools and rejecting the bad, practically created medi- cine as distinct from quackery. For fifteen centuries physi- cians followed in his footsteps ; "and this influence," says Mr. Berdoe, under the name of Galenism, was paramount in the eighteenth century, notwithstanding the discovery of the circulation of the blood and other great advances in science." Galen's intellectual activity, his elevated philosophy, and the literary charm of his writings, would alone suffice to float hie name down the stream of time ; but the man had a wider and a deeper insight into the human economy than many who came after him. He recognised final causes, a purpose in everything ; he understood the functions of the muscles and nerves, and their relation to the brain ; his correction of old errors reveal the accuracy of his anatomy and his penetrating insight ; and his analysis of the pulse is the earliest and the greatest, the first and the last. Mr. Berdoe continues the course of European medicine as far as the fifteenth century, then branches off into Central America, to discuss the knowledge of the Peruvians and Mexicans, returning to the sixteenth century and Paracelsus. The sixteenth century was remarkable, among other revolu- tions in the medical world, for the revival of vivisection in Italy. The fact, once disputed, is now established by the criminal archives of Florence. Cosmo de' Medici showed him- self most thoughtful on behalf of the Pisan anatomists. A -certain Maddalena, imprisoned fcr killing her son, "is to be sent here, if she be likely to recover, as it pleases his Excel- ency that he should be reserved for anatomy (l'anatomia). t) this nothing is to be said, but she is to be kept in hopes. If she is not likely to recover, the executioner is to be sent for to decapitate her." The notice concludes with "Went to Pisa, to he made an anatomy." No more cases occur .after 1570.
Among the curiosities of the healing art are the still existing survivals of prehistoric surgery in savage races. The American Indian performs on himself, and allows others to perform on him, the most serious operations with the stoicism peculiar to his race. And among some aborigines, .operations such as trepanning, and the Cesarean operation, are performed with skill and care. What we know of Oriental medicine is mostly of the philosophic and proverbial kind, such as "the desire to sleep is the health of youth, but the +sickness of age," and other apophthegms, sometimes terse, sometimes wordy. The Eastern knowledge of drugs, and especially poisons, however, was "extensive and peculiar." " The materia medica of the Bible," says Mr. I3erdoe, "is meagre." Figs are mentioned, and a fig-poultice is a well- known remedy. But the Bible contains some beautiful descriptions of the bodily economy, of health, and decay,— witness, too, the wonderful passage delineating old age in the Book of Ecclesiastes, which a modern writer has explained for us.
Mr. Berdoe has collected an astonishing amount of informa- tion, technical and otherwise, concerning physicians of all ages. The volume is meant to be a popular history of the subject ; but all, from the expert to the general reader, will find a vast amount of interesting matter and innumerable references to methods and instruments in use at various times.
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