There is yet another aspect of the medical character, infinitely more agreeable and important, and the consideration of it will bring us to the times immediately preceding the days of the father of medicine. I do not propose to penetrate into the story of Esculapius and his divine origin, which probably, in an esoteric sense, merely meant that the Giver of all good had inspired him with a knowledge of the healing art; but (with a passing glance at Homer, the greatest poet of his own or any subsequent age), proceed to offer some general observations on the position which the study of medicine acquired under the tutorship of the philosophers. The siege of Troy is supposed to have taken place about three hundred years before the _Iliad_ was sung, and in that early time it appears that the cultivation of our art formed part of the general education of kings and warriors.[6] ----- Footnote 6: “As for Medicine, something of it must have been understood in that age, though it was so far from perfection, that, according to Celsus, (book i.) what concerned _diet_ was invented long after by Hippocrates. The accidents of life make the search after remedies too indispensable a duty to be neglected at any time; accordingly, he tells us, that the Egyptians, who had many medicinal plants in their country, were all Physicians, and perhaps he might have learnt his own skill from his acquaintance with that nation. “The state of war in which Greece lived, required a knowledge in the healing of wounds, and this might make him breed his princes, Achilles, Patroclus, Podalirius and Machaon, to the science; what Homer thus attributes to others he himself knew, and he has given us reason to believe, not slightly, for if we consider his insight into the structure of the human body, it is so nice, that he has been judged by some to have wounded his heroes with too much science; or, if we observe his cure of wounds, which are the accidents proper to an epic poem, we find him directing the chirurgical operations, sometimes infusing lenitives, at other times bitter powders, when the effusion of blood required astringent qualities.”—_Pope’s Essay on the Character of Homer._ ----- Homer introduces us to Machaon the son of Esculapius, who, when Menelaus was treacherously wounded by Pandarus, is called to his aid: “When the wound appeared in sight, where struck The stinging arrow, from the clotted blood He cleansed it, and applied with skilful hand The healing ointments, which, in friendly guise, The learned _Chiron_ to his father gave.”[7] ----- Footnote 7: Lord Derby’s Translation. -----