2 2o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



ON THE HISTORY OF INTERNAL MEDICINE 1 



By JOHN BENJAMIN NICHOLS, M.D. 



WASHINGTON, D. C. 



AS a subject of general rather than of technical interest approp- 

 riate to this occasion, I propose to present a brief historical sur- 

 vey and some considerations relating to the development of internal 

 medicine. 



One of the primitive tendencies of human nature is the develop- 

 ment and employment of procedures aiming at the relief of personal 

 ailments and injuries. It is probable that all peoples have to a greater 

 or less extent developed something in the way of therapeutic practises. 

 In primitive stages of culture some agents of efficiency may have come 

 into domestic and popular use; but the chief development of medicine 

 in primitive societies has been in association with religious cults or 

 superstitious observances. Originally medical practise was mainly a 

 function of the priesthood. Even under such conditions the powerful 

 force of psychotherapy must have been brought into action so as to be 

 of benefit to distressed humanity. 



Ancient writings have preserved to us some account of the thera- 

 peutic methods in vogue in the earliest historic civilizations, such as 

 the Egyptian, Jewish, Babylonian, Assyrian, Indian, Chinese, etc.: 

 among these medicine was chiefly practised by the priests. It was 

 among the Greeks, however, and especially by Hippocrates and his 

 associates 2,300 years ago, that the foundations were laid from which 

 through a continuous line of existence and evolution can be traced the 

 development of civilized medicine to its present state. Probably from 

 the Egyptians and other antecedent and neighboring nations were de- 

 rived some contributions to Greek medicine, but the derivation is not 

 now clearly traceable, and practically the school of Hippocrates stands 

 as the originator of the present era of medicine. Since his time the 

 development of internal medicine has been intimately involved in four 

 great epochs or movements of civilization and thought, so that its 

 history is divisible into the following corresponding grand epochs : 



1. Greek (also Roman and Byzantine) medicine; from before 500 

 B.C. to the fall of the Roman Empire,— A.D. 476 (Rome), 640 (Alex- 

 andria), 1453 (Byzantium). 



2. Arabian medicine; about 750 to 1200 A. D. 



1 Presidential address before the George Washington University Medical 

 Society, May 20, 1911. 



