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Medicine in Early Greek Mythology.*

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Medicine in Early Greek Mythology.* MEDICINE IN EARLY GREEK MYTHOLOGY.* 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, Asia 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, magic, 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, familiar 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 Epidaurus and at Cos were in full bloom. Also in 420 B.C. when Hippocrates was forty years of age, " the ritual was introduced into Athens. 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 deity in the historic period, unique." Socrates was then about fifty years of age. The innovation was specially approved by the poet Sophocles. 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.
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