Greek mythology tells us that in the golden age mankind lived without trouble or sorrows, equally unacquainted with vice and with cruel disease; but when fatal curiosity opened the disastrous box of Pandora, along with a thousand other troubles which pursue mankind, there came forth also the countless diseases which attack men by day and night. The myth thus expresses in simple language that, with the advance of civilisation and the disappearance of the ancient simple mode of life in accordance with nature, the number of diseases also increased. But the greater the number of these attacks on the health and life of mankind, the more eagerly do men seek to avoid them, though, at first, in a purely empirical manner, and, therefore, the beginnings of the healing art are as ancient as human civilisation itself. The oldest literary monument of Greek life, the Homeric Epic, makes little mention of disease, with the exception of the great plague, which devastated the camp of the Greeks before Troy. The reason of this, however, lies in the nature of the poet’s subject, and we must not on that account infer that illness was little known. Even in Homer mention is made of physicians, and though the Homeric doctors were chiefly concerned with healing the wounds inflicted in war, still they possessed some surgical skill in cutting arrows out of wounds, putting on bandages, etc., and were also acquainted with the healing qualities of certain herbs, which they used not only for external treatment of injuries, but also apparently for internal use, in reducing fever, etc. Knowledge of this kind always appears very early, even among nations of slight civilisation, and is handed down from generation to generation. But the healing art was not confined to heroes or demigods, such as Aesculapius and Podalirius, who were afterwards regarded as ancestors of the physicians’ profession, and who traced their origin and their knowledge alike to the gods. There were also, even at that time, professional physicians, and certainly it cannot have been left to chance to determine that some persons possessing surgical and medical knowledge should be with every army. It is no longer possible to trace in detail the development of the medical profession after the times of Homer. In the historical period we find the healing art developed in two special directions; first, as practised by an actual medical profession; secondly, as a kind of religious mystery in the hands of priests; besides these, quackery was known in antiquity, as in all times.