I have ever supposed, that Necessity, the mother of invention, was the inventress of the blessed art; and that the origin was somewhat on this wise:--before the transgression, all went on well--there were neither aches nor ails--the apple certainly disagreed with Adam--he sought relief, by hunting for an antidote; and finding great comfort, in chewing such carminative herbs, as catmint and pennyroyal, he prescribed them to the sharer of his joys and sorrows. It is quite likely, that, with no family, and a great deal of time upon her hands, while walking in her garden, as poppies were not forbidden, Eve, to satisfy her curiosity, might have sucked their narcotic juice; and thus acquired a knowledge of opiates, so useful, ever since the fall. Physicking was, at first, a very general affair. Whether benevolence, or the desire of a little reputation lies at the bottom, there has ever existed, among mankind, a pungent, irresistible desire to physick one another. It is to be regretted, that Irenæus, who was just the man for it, had not given a few years of his life to ascertain, if Eve, during the parturition of Cain, or Abel, received any alleviation, from slippery elm. Plato, Theoctet. p. 149, says, the midwives of Athens did great, good service, on these occasions, with certain drugs and charms. In the beginning, so little was to be known, upon this subject, it is not wonderful, that almost every man should have known that little. Thus, according to Homer, Od. iv., 320, every Egyptian was a doctor:-- "From Pæon sprung, their patron god imparts To all the Pharian race his healing arts." Herodotus, who was born, about 484, B. C., in Book II. of his history, sec. 84, speaks distinctly of the fact, that the Egyptian _doctors_ were not physicians, in the general sense, but confined their practice, respectively, to particular diseases. The passage may be thus translated--_Now, in truth, the art of medicine with them was so distributed, that their physicians managed particular disorders, and not diseases generally; thus, though all were referred to the physicians, some were doctors for the eyes, some for the head, some for the teeth, some for the belly, and some for the occult diseases_. The first mention of physicians, in Holy Writ, is in Genesis, 50, 2--"_And Joseph commanded his servants, the physicians, to embalm his father: and the physicians embalmed Israel_." _Physicians_, to this extent, were mechanical operators; and the celebrated physicians of Greece, Chiron, Machaon, Podalirius, Poeon, and even Æsculapius, were _surgeons_. Their art, as Pliny says, did not go beyond curing a green wound. The cure of internal, or complicated, disorders was beyond their province. Celsus says, that Podalirius and Machaon, the physicians, who went with Agamemnon, to the wars of Troy, were never employed, to cure the plague, or internal maladies, nor anything but external injuries.