The more serious side of Greek medicine is inseparably connected with
the name of Hippokrates (born 460 B.C.), though the Koan school had
existed some time before his birth. The Asklepiadae were originally
members of a single clan, but the admission of persons from outside
soon made the clan into a medical school. The famous Hippokratean
oath, imposed upon members of the Koan school, shows the standard set
up before the medical profession: "I will conduct the treatment of the
sick for their advantage, to the best of my ability and judgment,
and I will abstain from all evil and all injustice. I will administer
poison to none, if asked to do so, nor will I ever make such a
suggestion. I will pass my life and exercise my art in innocence and
purity." In Greece there were both public and private physicians.
There were further dispensaries, or perhaps more accurately surgeries,
called [Greek: iatreia]. These were furnished with the necessary
surgical and medical appliances. The scene from a fifth century
vase-painting (No. =556=; fig. 223)[67] depicts a young surgeon at
work in an [Greek: iatreion]. He is operating on a patient's arm
(perhaps bleeding him), while another man, also wounded in the arm,
sits before him. A dwarf slave is ushering other patients into the
surgery, where bleeding-cups are seen hanging on the wall. Patients
also went to the [Greek: iatreia] to get draughts of medicine.[68]
Before the Alexandrian age it is probable that medicine was in advance
of surgery, for up to that time no scientific study of anatomy had
been attempted. Aristotle observes that the internal organs of the
human body were in his time very little known,[69] and what dissection
there was must have been practised on animals. The terracotta model
(No. =122=; fig. 36, above) of the heart, liver, lungs and kidneys
shows how vague the ancient idea as to the position of these organs
sometimes was.
=Roman Medicine.=--Medical science for a long time made but little
progress in Rome. The Greek physician Archagathos, who began to
practise there in 219 B.C., became extremely unpopular owing to his
bold methods of surgery.[70] The Roman doctors were chiefly of Greek
nationality, and not infrequently were slaves or freedmen. Julius
Caesar encouraged foreign physicians to settle in Rome by granting
them citizenship, and under the early Empire Rome was overcrowded with
medical men, if we may believe Pliny and Martial.[71]
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