_The pre-Homeric Period of Medicine in Greece._--The poems of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey, furnish us with the earliest and almost the only written evidence of the state of medicine in Greece during that period of time. They were probably written, according to the authority of the Earl of Derby, somewhere about 800 B. C., and modern investigations show that the siege of Troy, the theme of the Iliad, occurred between the years 1194 and 1184 B. C. These investigations also show that in this region, and especially in the Island of Crete and in Mycenae on the neighboring mainland of Asia Minor, at this time and probably several hundred years earlier, there existed a high degree of civilization. Specimens of a written language, for example, were found among the objects recovered from the ruins of the palace of King Minos at Cnossus in Crete, but hitherto no interpreter of this unknown language has been found. It is reasonable to expect, however, that in due time these Minoan records will be translated, that still other records belonging to this remote age will be discovered, and that much valuable information regarding the condition of medical knowledge in Greece during this long period will then be revealed to us. Strange as it may appear, the classical Greek writers seem to have possessed very little knowledge concerning this highly developed civilization at Cnossus. And yet, if we stop to consider the matter, their silence will appear less strange for the following reasons. Some great calamity (war, an earthquake, or a conflagration) must have destroyed many of the evidences of Minoan civilization besides those which are now being brought to light; then, also, several hundred years elapsed between the occurrence of this disaster and the classical period of Greek culture; and, finally, there is the fact that the knowledge of past historical events, when kept alive simply by tradition, slowly vanishes, until finally it becomes so vague as to possess very little value. The discoveries made in the Island of Crete and at Mycenae were not known to Daremberg when he wrote the lines quoted above, but he felt perfectly sure, from his knowledge of the laws of development in general, that a product so highly cultured as Homer could not have suddenly sprung into existence out of the apparent darkness and ignorance of the centuries immediately preceding his time.