The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800Buck, Albert H. (Albert Henry)
History
The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800
Buck, Albert H. (Albert Henry)
Medicine -- History
So far as power and discernment shall be mine, I will carry out
regimen for the benefit of the sick and will keep them from harm
and wrong. To none will I give a deadly drug even if solicited,
nor offer counsel to such an end; likewise to no woman will I
give a destructive suppository; but guiltless and hallowed will
I keep my life and mine art. I will cut no one whatever for the
stone, but will give way to those who work at this practice.
Into whatsoever houses I shall enter I will go for the benefit
of the sick, holding aloof from all voluntary wrong and
corruption, including venereal acts upon the bodies of females
and males whether free or slaves. Whatsoever in my practice or
not in my practice I shall see or hear amid the lives of men
which ought not to be noised abroad--as to this I will keep
silence, holding such things unfitting to be spoken.
And now if I shall fulfil this oath and break it not, may the
fruits of life and of art be mine, may I be honored of all men
for all time; the opposite if I shall transgress and be forsworn.
(Translated from the Greek by the late John G. Curtis, M.D., of
New York.)
While at first, according to Puschmann, many physicians did not belong
to the Aesculapian Brotherhood, there came a time when all were known
as Asclepiadae.
_Influence of the Schools of Philosophy on the Growth of Medical
Knowledge._--About the beginning of the sixth century B. C. there
developed, in Greece and its colonies, schools of philosophy which
exerted a most excellent influence upon the growth of medicine. The
first of these was the one known as the Ionian School, whose founders
and chief representatives were Thales, of Miletus in Ionia (born in
640, died in 548 B. C.), and his pupils Anaximander and Anaximenes.
The guiding principle of these men was to study natural phenomena and
to learn, if possible, their causes and the laws of their action.
Physiology, therefore, became one of their special studies, and
thus they contributed to the laying of one of the most important
foundation-stones of medicine. Thanks to the good quality of the work
of instruction that had thus far been carried on at Cos, Cnidus, and
other Asclepieia, medicine had by this time reached a sufficient
degree of development for its devotees to derive a full measure of
benefit from the new teaching of the philosophers. Well grounded in the
observation of disease in its different forms and modes of behavior,
and also familiarized with the ordinary methods of treatment, these
physicians needed to be shown a new route along which they might
advance to greater heights of knowledge, and they also needed to be
stimulated to further endeavor. The introduction of the new school
accomplished both of these purposes. It taught the men of the older
organizations that they must make much greater use of their reasoning
powers than they had hitherto done, and at the same time, through
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