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Home , Agamede, Archegetes, Chariclo, Elatus, Eurypylus, Eurytus

MEDICINE IN EARLY .*

By J. D. GILRUTH, M.D., F.R.C.P. Edin.

" This Address has for its subject Medicine in Early Greek Mythology." It endeavours to represent some results of long and pleasurable interest in, and study of, certain aspects of medical life in European prehistory. By medical life let us mean evidences of medical activity as shown, or at least as deduced, from definite evidence we are able to acquire. By Europe, as distinct from its neighbouring continents, and Africa, we limit the boundaries of our enquiry. But the juxtaposition of those continents, Asia by its bridgehead at the Propontis, and Africa, in respect to Egypt, by its near and constant relation to the great Bronze Age of Crete, makes it impossible to avoid noticing contacts, forces and intermediate influences. Not only so, but as ascertained, medicine, practical and organised, really came from the East. Our duty is to attempt to penetrate into the past and discover when it came, and, if time permits, how it came. The word "prehistory" requires some definition and ex- planation. It is of course not a chronological term, but one used for convenience, and somewhat arbitrarily, to signify the period before which eye-witnesses recorded their own observa- tions, and the time in which by other means we can proceed to gather probable, sometimes only possible, data or information. Now just as in any other field of enquiry, legal, medical or technical, some witnesses are reliable, and others far from believable, so in the region of prehistory; it is necessary to be careful in the extreme of the nature of the evidence to be considered. Each source has to satisfy us as to its credentials. Just in the same way we must criticise the intellectual effort made by persons who have already acted as interpreters of evidence. Are they reliable ? How much can they be trusted in regard to their imaginative deliverance ? Or, in turn, are they telling deliberate lies, for purposes perhaps hidden intentionally from our knowledge ? Historians themselves are noted from the beginning of time for garbling their accounts. Fictions are added to facts. Much good history has been * Presidential Address to the Forfarshire Medical Society, delivered at the Annual Meeting at Montrose on 19th June 1935. 66t J. D. Gilruth diverted from the straight and narrow path of truth by such story-tellers, and that in our own land as elsewhere. At the same time it is unwise to throw discredit all the time on the findings of garrulous fellows like Herodotus, or, say, our own John of Fordoun. Often this kind of writer had access to sources of information no -longer possessed by us, and we must with painstaking energy, and frequently, weigh their quota in the judicial balance. So far, then, the air is clear from possible misunderstandings as to the nature of our enquiry. Let us now investigate more minutely how all this applies to Europe. The historical age began in our continent at the time when the Ionian and Sicilian philosophers, with great intellectual ability, first used scientific means of approach to natural phenomena. This was about the beginning of the sixth century before our era. In medicine the fresh outlook, the new mental orientation, in time, produced its chief flower in the so-called school of Hippocrates of Cos, who was born about the year 460 B.C. Now while Hippocrates falls well within what we have called the historic period, and most treatises on Medical History in Europe practically start off with the work and attainment of this great pioneer, certain facts have to be taken into consideration. Those facts make it probable that much of the work of Hippocrates, or work attributed to Hippocrates, was derived from sources stretching far back into prehistory. Let me state those facts. The collection of writings which have come down to us known as the Hippocratic Corpus is the work of many authors, and in many places, holding widely different views, writing a centuries between at many different periods, perhaps few the first and last. No single work can be said definitely to be that of Hippocrates himself. The collection was edited and revised in the time of Aristotle, and again by the later " " Hellenistic scribes. The Ebers papyrus found in Egypt, dating approximately about the middle of the sixteenth century B.C., contains word for word certain prescriptions which are found in the Hippocratic material. This papyrus, and a later, named the Brugsch, dating roughly about 1350 B.C. are again in turn compilations of much older writings, going back to the period before Imhotep, the chief physician and " " vizier of the Emperor Sozer, whose floruit was approxi- mately 2900 B.C. Like Asclepios, Imhotep was a real person, and became the national god of medicine. 662 Medicine in Early Greek Mythology

" Imhotep's name means, He who cometh in peace." He was descended from an architect name Kanofer. His education was extensive and his erudition and judgment supreme. His temple was at Edfa, near Memphis. As an architect also he designed the step pyramid at Sakkhara. It was destined to be the tomb of his master, the Emperor Sozer. " " The Ebers papyrus contains the mention of copper salts, squills, castor-oil, opium and hemlock. The Phoenicians introduced Arabic and Indian drugs and herbs, as is known by a section of the papyrus. But temple ritual, , and priestcraft ruled the thought and directed the energies of the practitioners of medicine. The Hippocratic Corpus, long held to be the beginning of medical science, and the sole surviving remnant of past activity in medicine, was really the completion and fulfilment of previous development, but contained in itself the germs of future progress, the seeds of fuller growth, and to-day in our own generation we are reaping the fruits. In the course of time, the res medica, though Indo-germanic in substance, passed through the long and fertile culture, first of Egypt, then of the great empire of Crete, later becoming absorbed in what is called the Mycenaean era of Greece. Through those intellectual filters some purification must have taken place. But the clarifying process, if any, is difficult to apprehend, and the connecting links difficult to perceive, because of the want of written or documentary disclosure. But we must not underestimate the importance in history of the great life-work of Hippocrates. He stands, says " Neuburger, at the confines of two epochs, rooted in' the remotest past, yet providing direction and a goal to the immediate present; a shining example of philanthropy and professional faithfulness ; a seeker after truth with full con- " sciousness of its being unattainable." Admired by all, really understood by few, imitated by many, equalled by none, he was the master of medicine for all time." Hippocrates was an Asclepiad. This may mean that he was an actual descendant of Asclepios, and a member of the Asclepiad family. The male members before and after him were distinguished physicians. Associated with him is the famous Hippocratic oath, to you all. The " portion in which the initiate undertakes that he will keep his life " and profession in the ways of purity and righteousness has 663 J. D. Gilruth been the watchword of European medicine. Otherwise we do not find in his supposed writings any distinct recognition of Asclepios. This is significant, and may prove their descent from a period when the hieratic cult had less force than it seems to have possessed in the fifth century. By that time the Asclepieia at and at Cos were in full bloom. Also in 420 B.C. when Hippocrates was forty years of age, " the ritual was introduced into . The presence temple " of the god," Asclepios, was inducted and solemnized by a " chariot escorting the sacred serpent from Epidaurus." We " gather the impression," says Farnell, of a ceremony, strange, appealing, and, in regard to the hallowing of a new in the historic period, unique." Socrates was then about fifty years of age. The innovation was specially approved by the poet . In a few years a temple was built on the southern slope of the Acropolis. When we saw the remains three years ago, nothing could be recognised by us but rubble and broken capitals. The cave from which had emerged the sacred serpents was duly pointed out. Plato, who has been " described by Burnet as perhaps the greatest man that ever lived," was an infant when the august ceremony described took place. Yet in the Symposium, which describes an imaginary banquet that took place in Athens in the year a of his 415 B.C., Plato introduces typical Greek physician time, cultured and esteemed, by name Eryximachus. In the " course of his dissertation on what he calls the good and " evil love in the human body," Eryximachus says : Our progenitor, Asclepios, as the poets inform us, and indeed I believe them, through the skill which he possessed to inspire love and concord in those contending principles, established the science of medicine." " Plato, again, in the Phczdo, called by Taylor perhaps the greatest thing in the prose literature of Europe," records the last words that Socrates, his own great preceptor, used : " I owe a cock to Asclepios." This far-reaching event, the death by poison, and the martyrdom of Socrates, occurred in the spring or early summer of 399 B.C. By that time the Athenians were accustomed to the whole paraphernalia of the temple services, the ceremony of incubation, the sacred all serpents, the sacred dogs, and the official dog guardians, made sacrosanct by long tradition in Epidaurus, and forming part of theurgy and supernatural metaphysics. The practice of medicine, secular and hieratic, was placed therefore during 664 Medicine in Early Greek Mythology the age of , under the divine of Asclepios, and was regarded as being inspired by him. The question we must now ask ourselves is, who was Asclepios and what can we learn about him ? In order to answer this question we require to step off the sure ground of recorded history and apply ourselves to the European literature available. The earliest surviving literature in this continent of ours is that bequeathed to us by the author of the great epic poems, the and the . Of 's personality we know nothing. Those in authority pronounce varied opinions even as to the date of those poems. Rival factions dispute the question as to the work being that of one or more persons. Recent opinion asserts that the Iliad at least is in many respects a reliable and authentic document, purporting to describe events which occurred in connection with the . This was an event of undoubted happening in the period of 1200 B.C. or perhaps, to agree with Herodotus, the year 1184. It is now agreed that much genuine material, by whatever channels it came, was derived from the epoch when the great Achaean or Mycenaean empire was in full power, that is between approximately 1400 and 1200 B.C. The palace of Cnossos in Crete fell in or about 1384 B.C. by sudden catastrophic calamity. In a day, centuries of Bronze Age perfection in art, science, architecture and tech- nique, crumbled into the dust. About the same time the Hittite empire, or Hatti power, centred to the east of the river Halys in Asia Minor, gradually dwindled in prestige and consequence, owing to pressure both from East and West. Egypt, a splendid maritime power at the time of the Ebers papyrus, suffered many fateful shocks from its sea-borne enemies, and by 1200 B.C. many of its tentacles were withdrawn, many of its outposts scattered. became the nucleus of the storm area, the cockpit of inevitable battle. The cause may have been the fair Helen, the wife of , the brother of the Achaean leader, , and her abduction by a Trojan prince. But there were other causes also?-loot, jealousy, and, as is always the case, old scores to settle. At all events East met West in the ten years war to the death. Much we do not know, but this at any rate is certain, that much later, some three hundred years or more, a great epic of the Trojan war in the hands of a mighty genius, became crystallised into our first European verse. The world throughout the centuries, N.S. IV., XLII. NO. XII. 665 2 X J. D. Gilruth even to the present day, has been made the sweeter and the richer on its account. " In the second Iliad, we find the Catalogue," the " " dramatis personas of the Achaean and the Trojan forces. The various contingents are enumerated and their localities " given. There we find the following lines: And they that held Tricca, and Ithome of the crags, and CEchalia, city of (Echalian Eurytus, these again were led by the two sons of Asclepios, the skilled physicians, Podaleirios and ." Throughout the poem those two warrior surgeons discharge their duties with workman-like efficiency. Asclepios, the father, is never mentioned as a god. There is no reason to doubt that Podaleirios and Machaon were real men. Homer was unlikely to fabricate the names. There is no magic in any of their actions. They were also commandants in charge of troops. At one time Machaon is wounded, Podaleirios is " " in the plain abiding the sharp battle of the Trojans and has to take up their duty for them. Patroclus is " appealed to because , his friend, whom men say, Cheiron, the most righteous of the , had taught," " had instructed Patroclus in the art. Patroclus clasped Eurypylus beneath the breast, and led him to his tent, and his squire, when he saw them, strewed upon the ground hides of oxen. Then Patroclus made him lie at length, and with a knife cut from his thigh the sharp piercing arrow, and from the wound washed the black blood with warm water, and upon it cast a bitter root, when he had rubbed it between his hands, a root that slayeth pain, which stayed all his pangs ; " and the wound waxed dry, and the blood ceased (//. xi. 830). This is the first account of surgical treatment in Europe. The sons of Asclepios provide just such similar treatment all through the poem. It reaches a high level in this respect that with meticulous accuracy the localities of the wounds are described. Viscera, head, shoulder, bladder, all receive precise and careful delineation. Chances of safety or of death are noted. There is clearly a highly developed habit of observation, which the artist-author imposes on himself. The only con- clusion reachable is that a long medical tradition has already been established. But others besides the sons of Asclepios are skilled in the art. " " Fair haired Agamede (//. xi. 740) knew all the pharmaka " " that the " wide earth nourisheth." Fair tressed Hecamede " acts as a goodly nurse, as we see when said : Howbeit, 666 Medicine in Early Greek Mythology do thou sit down where thou art and quaff the flaming wine, until fair tressed Hecamede shall heat for thee a warm bath, and wash from thee the clotted blood." Even the Gods heal by medical means. Paieon, the Olympian God of Healing, is bidden by to heal the wound of (//. v. 901). So " Paieon spread thereon soothing pharmaka that allay pain and healed him." , the divine nurse of Olympus, in " turn, bathed him and clad him in beautiful raiment." is healed in the same way by Paieon (//. v. 400). But when is wounded by Teucre (//. xvi. 515) he appeals to " , to heal him of his grievous wounds, and lull his pains, and give him might." Apollo hears him and forthwith " he made the pains to cease, staunched the black blood, and put might into his heart." Apollo is therefore a healer amongst the gods, and in someway related to Paieon. , the sister of Apollo, and their " " mother, heal ^Eneas in the great sanctuary of Pergamus. Now a word or two must be said about this unique figure of Paieon, the god of healing, in the Homeric . Some questions ought also to be put about him. The name itself to the is difficult philologically. Is it in any way related Paeonians, a Macedonian tribe, figuring largely in early literature ? Further, the name is used twice in the poem of " the Iliad to mean a hymn," once as a hymn of purgation addressed to Apollo, and the second time as a hymn of triumph sung by the Greeks over the lifeless body of Hector. Moreover, the word Paieon, or Paian, is used in this double sense by and the fifth century dramatists. calls him, " Paieon who knows the pharmaka for all things." Apparently the double usage is recognised, and sanctioned, and therefore cannot have been considered strange by the reader. Was the then first in time, or did the god give his name to the hymn ? So far as I can discover, the proper view is that the song, or hymn, or incantation, preceded the personification of the god. In this subject, however, we are really penetrating into a very remote past, so long before Homer that it is possible his own knowledge was slight and confused. By his time the process of anthropomorphising and separating the original thought into two meanings was complete. " That process seems to have been as follows : Primitive " gods," says Miss Harrison, are to a large extent collective enthusiasms, uttered, formulated." The process of deification starts with the choral dance, a war dance, a rain dance, or a 667 J. D. Gilruth dance to celebrate recovery from illness. Dancing heightens and emphasises the tense emotion of the participants. They lose their identity and emotionally become united to the group aided in their efforts by disguises or masks. A leader is called for. The Choros appoints one of their number to " be the exarchos." Soon he is the chief performer, differ- entiated, selected for contemplation and respect. The Choros draws away further and further, becoming tense, sympathetic, then critical. Then out of this emotion comes awe, wonder, severance is then worship, , praise, and . The " complete. The leader is now a god," no longer the chief , but projected into another stratum of their imagination and spirit. The song and dance are thus identified with the god. In some such way, then, the god Paieon, and the song, the Paean, are originally the same. But the connection is not expressed. It is deep down in Homer's subconscious mind. The presence of the God of Healing in the Olympian theogony also clearly shows that in the Mycenaean empire, of which Agamemnon was the supreme head, and upon which it is averred by competent scholars that Homer built the counselship of the gods, the presence of a physician in chief to hazard the was a sine qua non. It is not too much guess of that the emperor of the adopted this procedure electing a high physician to the court from a similar usage in the Palace of Cnossus in Crete. For there to-day in the magnificent labyrinthine ruins, covering many acres, of the Palace of we see evidences of splendid hygienic and sanitary science, an equipment that scarcely can be surpassed in modern times. Until the Cretan script can be read, we have lost in only to guess much of their learning and skill, but, wonder at the ingenuity of their architects, we sense a profound knowledge of prophylactic medicine behind it all. But let us go back again to Homer. There is, as has been said, in his writings no temple or priestly interference with, or in, the medical work. Homer is now accredited with a his fine sense of responsibility in evolving and expressing theme. The so-called Catalogue of the Iliad is held by modern scholars and archaeologists to be a fairly accurate, or, at a in to Homer's any rate, plausible pre-Dorian document regard geography. The home of Asclepios is at Tricca, far up the Peneius river, in the north of . It is the modern Triccala, a town of 22,000 people, one of the few places which to-day can be identified in the topography of Homer. No 668 Medicine in Early Greek Mythology fewer than nine of the baronial establishments are mentioned in their proper places. Of these many can be traced to their own genealogies. Some of the names are those of highly important dynasties ruling in the previous centuries. Thessaly itself is full of rich and storied legendary lore. A small state ninety miles or so in length and breadth, the distance say between Aberdeen and Perth, the area contains more of pre- historic saga, , and legend, than any other similarly sized locus in all the world. Surrounded by impressive mountains on every side, no more classic boundaries can be conceived. Olympus, Ossa and Pelion, the Pindus range, the Cambunian hills, Othrys and (Eta, are all famed in song and story. Drained by the one river, with tributaries from north, west, and south, Northern Thessaly is known from earliest times to have been the land inhabited by rude, primitive and barbarous tribes. Some century and a half before the Trojan War, that is about 1350 B.C., or earlier, new dynasties began to come in and settle down, and to intermarry with the leading tribal families. The , Magnetes, , and Centaurs were interfused by those immigrant baronies, the Minyanscame from Orchomenos to the city of Iolcus, and from there the great voyage of the , led by , pursued its famous journey by sea to the far east of the Euxine. The Lapiths fought the Centaurs at the foot of the mountain of Pelion, and, as recorded by Homer, were expelled furth of Thessaly to the valleys to the west of the Pindus. Into the south between Orthys and (Eta, in the Sperchius valley, came the Achaeans, the Hellenes, and the . In this small vale, with a culture essentially different from that of the mountain-bound flat land of the Peneius, we find the first tribes that called themselves by the name of Hellenes, in the land of Hellas ?" the land of fair women." Here was the origin of the Hellenic race. In this fascinating state of Thessaly, then, about 1250 B.C., we can place the hero-physician, the " " progenitor of the medical craft in Greece, Asclepios. In " " " " Homer he is the peerless physician, his sons the clever doctors of the Achaean forces, who employ the soothing pharmaka, which of old Cheiron, the most just , gave " to their father. In a Homeric Hymn, Asclepios is a healer " " of sicknesses," a great joy to men," and a soother of cruel In Hesiod we have stray references to his mother pangs." " , who washed her feet in the Bcebian lake." But it is to Pindar we turn for the fully developed story of the birth N.S. IV., XLII. NO. XII. 669 2X2 J. D. Gilruth of Asclepios, and, as it may be new to some of you here, I shall give it to you at its fullest. But before doing so it is necessary to mention the veneration Pindar holds for the teacher of Asclepios, Cheiron the centaur. If time permits, I shall discuss the significance in the field of prehistory of this extra- ordinary figure, according to folk lore, half man, half horse, who according to all the traditions and mythologies of Greece, was the teacher, the one and only intellectual begetter, not only of Asclepios, but of Achilles, Jason, Medeus, and many others. It is enough at the moment to call your attention to the place he has in Pindar's exquisite poem (Pyth. iii.). The date of Pindar is of course well into the historical period. He was born about 522 B.C., but being a Boeotian, with a long and venerated pedigree, his soul was primed with the legends of the past handed down to him through centuries by his own kith and kin. The paean is addressed to Hieron of Syracuse, the winner of a Pythian horse race, who was suffering at the time from a stone in his bladder. The date of the ode is 474 B.C. Here it is :?

"If the poet's tongue might breathe the prayer that is on the lips of all, I would pray that Cheiron, son of , who is dead and gone, were now alive again?he who once ruled far and wide as the offspring of , who was the son of heaven. Would that that rugged monster with spirit kindly even such as unto men, were reigning still in Pelion's glens, when, in olden days, he reared Asclepios, that gentle craftsman who drove pain from the limbs that he healed?that hero who manner maladies. gave aid in all of " Ere the daughter of , famed for his steeds, could bear him, in the fulness of time, with the aid of Eleithuia, the goddess of childbirth, she was stricken in her chamber by the golden arrows of Artemis, and thus descended to the home of Hades by the counsels of Apollo. Not in vain is the wrath of the sons of Zeus. For she, in the errors of her heart, had lightly regarded that wrath ; and although she had aforetime consorted with Phoebus of the unshorn hair, and bare within without her father's her the pure seed of the god, yet knowledge she consented to be wedded to another. She waited not for the coming of the marriage feast, nor for the music of the full-voiced hymeneal chorus, even the playful strains that maiden mates love to utter in evening songs. No, she was enamoured of things otherwhere?that passion which many ere now have felt. . . . Medicine in Early Greek Mythology

" Such was the strong infatuation that the spirit of the fair-robed Coronis had caught. For she slept in the couch of a stranger who came from Arcadia ; but she escaped not the ken of the watchful god ; for although he was then at the sacrificial shrine of Pytho, yet Loxias, the king of the temple, perceived it in his mind that knoweth all things, with his thought convinced by an unerring prompter. . . . Even so at that time he knew of her consorting with the stranger, Ischus, son of , and of her lawless deceit. Thereupon he sent his sister, Artemis, speeding with resistless might, even to Lacereia, for the unwedded girl was dwelling by the banks of the Boebian lake ; and her evil genius perverted her heart the and laid her low, and many of her neighbours suffered for same, and perished with her ; even as on a mountain, the fire that hath been sped by a single spark layeth low a mighty forest. " But when the kinsman had placed the girl in the midst of the wooden walls of the pyre, and the wild flame of the fire-god was playing around it, then spake Apollo : 'No longer can I endure in my heart to slay my own child by a death most piteous, at the self same time as its mother's grievous doom.' He stepped forward but once, and anon he found his child, and snatched it from the corse, while the kindled fire opened for him a path of light ; and he bare the babe away, and gave it to the Magnesian centaur to teach it how to heal mortal men of painful maladies. " And those whosoever came suffering from the sores of nature, or with their limbs wounded either by grey bronze or by far hurled stone, or with bodies wasting away with summer's heat or winter's cold, he loosed and delivered divers of them from diverse pains, tending some of them with kindly incantations, giving to others a soothing , or haply swathing their limbs with simples, or restoring others by the knife. But alas ! even the lore of leechcraft is enthralled by the love of gain ; even he was seduced by a splendid fee of gold displayed upon his palm, to bring back from death one who was already its lawful prey. Therefore the son of Cronus with his hands hurled his shaft through both of them, and swiftly reft the breath from out their breasts, for they were stricken with sudden doom by the gleaming . . . . " But?if only the sage Cheiron had still been dwelling in his cave, and if only our honey-sweet songs had cast a spell upon his soul, surely I had persuaded him to send someone 671 J. D. Gilruth to heal noble men from their fits of fever, someone called the son of Asclepios or Apollo."

Now it is necessary here to examine our evidence rather more closely. It is, of course, first-class poetry, and something must be allowed for what is called poetic licence. There is also a good deal of myth connected with it ; the jealousy of Apollo, the aid of Eleithuia, the goddess who presided over childbirth ; also the doom which the god brings to the money- grubbing physician. The element of folk lore, which is really folk memory, perhaps distorted, is strong in the death on the funeral pyre, an uncommon piece of marchen, to which I shall refer later. But what is very significant in Pindar's " version is that he carefully omits any reference to the other prompter," although Hesiod, writing much earlier, tells it with directness and simplicity. This is what he says : "To him then, Apollo, came a messenger from the sacred feast, a crow, and he told unshorn Phoebus of secret deeds, that Ischus, son of Elatus, had wedded Coronis, the daughter of Phlegyas of divine birth." In later additions we learn that the crow which was originally white was made black by Apollo in his anger at the news the bird had brought. Pindar does not need this accretion or embellishment. That does not mean that he did not know about it. Only his poetic sense refused it. Passing then the invocation to Cheiron, who reared Asclepios, although this is the real burden of the theme, let us consider the story Pindar tells. It is a very human and domestic romance. No one doubts that Coronis was purely " a princess of Lapith Thessalian blood. She lived by the holy twin hills in the plain of Dotium," Hesiod says. A stranger comes, Ischus, the son of Elatus, an Arcadian, and as a result, in due course, her confinement becomes due. There was doubtless circumstantial evidence for the paternity of Ischus, but had secret gossip not disclosed the dalliance " of the fair princess, the child would have gone up to a god," that is Apollo would have been the declared father. Then in her chamber she was stricken with fire, which consumed her, slaying her and many of her neighbours besides. Now this is, as I have said, folk memory, but on the other hand is it not the memory of a raging fever, which we in our day " would call puerperal ? Does the statement, the many " neighbours besides not suggest that, as was more than likely, the puerperal sepsis was an epidemic of great malignancy? 672 Medicine in Early Greek Mythology

" " " Apollo stretched forward but once and soon he found the child." It is a gleam of splendid poetic imagination to say " that the kindled fire opened for him a path of light." Now, no known Greek ritual could, so they say, have suggested such a myth or legend. It is not hieratic, but purely human, and essentially appropriate in the remembrance of the birth of a healer possessing supernormal power. His death also falls naturally into line with his fall from grace in extracting a huge fee for restoring the dead to life. Zeus does not reward him, but punishes him for raising the dead. It is " significant that in this case the divine powers are concerned with the natural order of events, rather than with miracles." If, also, Asclepios was killed by lightning, after a strenuous life as a beloved physician, it is only natural that popular folk memory would be intrigued. One feels that it is the seduction by the offer of a splendid fee, which is the cause of the anger of Zeus. Asclepios was no better than Chaucer's doctor in the Prologue :? For gold in Physik is a cordial, Therefore he lovede gold in special. The story as so fully told by Pindar has, then, the appearance of truth, although we cannot say that Pindar, who shaped it into the finest literature, is necessarily to be depended on as evidence. The family of Coronis, the Phlegyae, or Lapiths, were long established in north-eastern Thessaly. A descendant of Phlegyas, Polypoietes, goes to the Trojan war with Agamemnon. The Asclepiad family obtains lands to the west at Tricca. From later evidence this family migrated to Phokis at a place called Tithorea. There the hero-physician was, or had become before, deified, and was worshipped under the role of Archegetes. This was a title only attached when the original god or hero was the real founder of the tribe. Before leaving our friend Pindar and his sublime poem, a word or two is necessary regarding the description of the medical and surgical powers of Asclepios. The account is a succinct narration of the general range of a physician's and a activities. It does not exclude the ability to use, surgeon's " and practice, knife-craft. The phrase soothing their limbs with simples," means rather, applying materials made from herbs all round about their limbs. This denotes the treatment of fractures and perhaps sores. The whole passage strengthens the contention that medicine and surgery in Greece attained a high level and a lofty ideal long before the days of Hippocrates. 67 3 J. D. Gilruth

Time does not allow me to do more than mention the character of Cheiron very briefly. His importance as the teacher and tutor of Asclepios must be apparent. It is evident that Cheiron was in many ways the herosiatros, the hero- physician of Pindar. The name Cheiron at once suggests a derivation from Cheir, the hand, a word incorporated and deeply embedded in the word we use every day, surgeon, which is, as you all know, Cheirurgeon, a worker by the hand. There is no reference in either name to work by the hand on the human body. How old the name Chirurgeon is no one knows. Cheiron was a centaur, half man, half horse. But Homer frequently uses the word Pher, for centaur. This means " " simply wild creature," like the Latin ferox." This opens the whole question, Who were the centaurs ? Where did they come from ? What is the origin of the idea ? We know of course that no such hybrid man ever lived. What are their legends ? How did they appear in the earliest works of art of vase painting and sculpture ? Now, tentative answers to those questions could be forthcoming if time had permitted. For the same reason I must cut short my narrative of the most fascinating life-history of the most famous centaur, whose name was Cheiron. Unlike the others he was, according " to Homer, the most righteous." He is also the centre of a much richer and more highly varied cycle of saga than Asclepios. He touches intimately the fabric of many great Thessalian legends. He was the teacher of Achilles, Jason, the hero of the Argo, and Medeus, the son of the wonderful eastern princess whom Jason brought back from Colchis. His life story touches some of the grandest and most thrilling dramas of the world. He appears in the tragic story of and . In his rocky cave on Mount Pelion he celebrates the marriage of his grandson, , to , the Ocean , in the presence of all the gods of Olympus. Small though it is, his share in that profound religious poetic masterpiece, the of ^schylus, is one too little mentioned by the numerous writers on that exquisite though difficult drama. We find Cheiron thoroughly domesticated in the centaur country of Thessaly, teaching medicine and music to the princes of the land. His mother is Philyra, a lime tree ; his wife , a familiar figure in vase painting of a later date; his daughter, 674 Medicine in Early Greek Mythology

Endeis, marries in clue course, ^Eacus, a prince, who comes " in from nowhere." They become the parents of Peleus and Telamon, two great personalities in the Trojan war. Peleus is again the father of Achilles, whose wrath is the burden of the Iliad. Ajax, the son of Telamon, is renowned as a warrior of almost superhuman character. ^Eacus, the Prince, may- have come from the East. The story of Philyra, Cheiron's mother, comes from ancient sources. Kronos, the father of Zeus, is chiefly associated with Crete. He loses his wife, or Ge, and wanders far to seek her. In Thessaly he falls in with Philyra, an Oceanid ; " " the twy form," Rose says, of the son, Cheiron, was accounted for by the story that Kronos turned himself into a stallion, byway of disguise, or Philyra turned herself into a mare to escape him." Now all we can venture to suggest is that the myth may point to an immigrant lady, whose child of unknown parentage " went up to a god," and in this case to the god, Kronos, because of the mother's association with Crete, the home she came from. The myth of the wise and learned man-horse is seen in later times, very frequently in mural paintings, vases, gems, and sarcophagi. It tinges deeply the literature of the Greek Hellenistic, and the Roman periods. In the manuscript of Dioscorides, Cheiron appears as the father and instructor of all physicians. If we conclude, as I think we must, that Cheiron was a real live man, and that he brought the learning and culture of medicine into a comparatively primitive and unenlightened area, and gave it to Asclepios and others at a time when alien families were immigrating there, it is no great stretch of the imagination to suppose that he was in touch with the age-long accumulated storehouse of medical art which we find in the papyri of the fifteenth century before our era in Egypt. We are back again to Egypt!

" Here, we find Homer saying, every man is a physician " skilled beyond all human kind," Earth, the grain giver, yields herbs in plenty, some that are healing in the cup, some " that are baneful," and again, Fair Helen got the drug she cast into the wine, a drug to lull all pain and anger, and bring forgetfulness to every sorrow" (Od. iv. 219). To-day, we who are the healers of the modern mould, would do well to lay a laurel wreath on the graves of Imhotep, Cheiron, Asclepios and Hippocrates. 675 J. D. Gilruth

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