Volume 1

The homœopathic theory and practice of medicine / by E.E. Marcy and F.W. Hunt.

  • Marcy, E. E. (Erastus Edgerton), 1815-1900.
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The homœopathic theory and practice of medicine / by E.E. Marcy and F.W. Hunt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of affliction, they will learn to comprehend the laws by which nature is governed in her efforts to resist the powers of disease, as well as to aid those efforts in accomplishing their beneficent purposes. The origin of Medical Science is lost among the obscure traditions and fables of the earliest ages. The mythological history of the ancients derived the art of curing diseases from the direct inspiration of their gods; and even among the moderns many authors of the highest reputation have attributed to Medicine a Divine origin. But, in reviewing the progressive steps by which the most sublime of all sciences has advan- ced from a position in which it was a mere appendage to the pi'iestly office to that of a proud and noble profession, we may safely begin with the assumption that individual observations must have been made by the earliest inhabitants of our earth; that these observations embraced the diseases to which they found themselves subject, as well as the injuries received in war or by accidents. As in modern times the lowest savages discovered by explorers have possessed some degree of medical and surgical knowledge ; it may be presumed that medicrne in its rudest form is almost coeval with the duration of human existence. The sight of suffering in the earliest times must have led to the desire to relieve it. And when men's small experience failed, super-natural means, such as charms and incantations must next be tried. At what period it began to be practiced as a distinct profession is not known. The most ancient physicians we read of were those who embalmed the body of the patriarch Jacob, by order of his son Joseph; and these physicians were the servants of Joseph, not priests, as the earliest physicians are supposed to have been. At that time Religion and Medicine had been already separated into distinct callings and they so continued ever afterwards. The Egyptians themselves attributed the invention of Medicine to Thoth, the Hermes, or Mercury of the Greeks. He is said to have written many things in hieroglyphic characters upon certain pillars, in order to perpetuate his knowledge. These were transcribed by Agathodemon, or the second Mercury, whose son Tout is said to have composed books of them which were kept in the most sacred places in the Egyptian temples. The books however attributed to these ancient personages have long been considered as forgeries ; and they were more probably written many ages after the time of Hermes. The art of curing disease was blended in the religion of Egypt with superstitious traditions and observances ; and it is certain that their first . physicians were priests. They were treated by the people with the highest respect; and on certain public occasions they moved in solemn procession through the splendid temples and palaces of Thebes and Memphis, dressed in stately robes, and bearing the symbolic, represen-^ tative bed of the goddess of Love and Beauty. As the Egyptians, and