168 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



agree, however, in the assertion that medicine was of divine ori- 

 gin : evidently implying its descent through the priesthood. In 

 the introduction to Charaka's work, medical knowledge is said to 

 have indirectly descended from Brahma to Indra, while " Bharad- 

 vaja learned it from Indra, and imparted it to six Rishis, of whom 

 Agnivasa was one." The association of medical practice with 

 priestly functions is also implied in the statement of Hunter that 

 " the national astronomy and the national medicine of India alike 

 derived their first impulses from the exigencies of the national 

 worship." The same connection was shown during the ascend- 

 ancy of Buddhism. " The science was studied in the chief centers 

 of Buddhist civilization, such as the great monastic university of 

 Nalanda, near Gaya\" 



Similar was the genesis of the medical profession among the 

 Greeks. "The science [of medicine] was of divine origin, and 

 the doctors continued, in a certain sense, to he accounted the de- 

 scendants of Asklepios." As we read in Grote 



" The many families or gentes called Asklepiads, who devoted them- 

 selves to the study and practice of medicine, and who principally dwelt 

 near the temples of Asklepius, whither sick and suffering men came to 

 obtain relief all recognized the god [Asklepius] not merely as the object 

 of their common worship, hut also as their actual progenitor." 



In later times we see the profession becoming secularized. 



"The union between the priesthood and the profession was gradually 

 becoming less and less close ; and, as the latter thus separated itself, divi- 

 sions or departments arose in it, both as regards subjects, such as pharmacy, 

 surgery, etc., and also as respects the position of its cultivators." 



Miscellaneous evidence shows that during early Roman times, 

 when there existed no medical class, diseases were held to be 

 supernaturally inflicted, and the methods of treating them were 

 methods of propitiation. Certain maladies ascribed to certain 

 deities prompted endeavor to pacify those deities ; and hence there 

 were sacrifices to Febris, Mephitis, Ossipaga, and Carna. An 

 island in the Tiber, which already had a local healing god, be- 

 came also the seat of the ^Esculapius cult : that god having been 

 appealed to on the occasion of an epidemic. Evidently, therefore, 

 medical treatment at Rome, as elsewhere, was at first associated 

 with priestly functions. Throughout subsequent stages the nor- 

 mal course of evolution is deranged by influences from other 

 societies. Conquered peoples, characterized by actual or sup- 

 posed medical skill, furnished the medical practitioners. For a 

 long time these were dependents of patrician houses. Say Guhl 

 and Koner " Physicians and surgeons were mostly slaves or 

 freedmen." And the medical profession, when it began to de- 

 velop, was of foreign origin. Mommsen writes : 



