THE HISTORY OF INTERNAL MEDICINE 221 



3. Medieval medicine; about 500 to 1825. Monastic medicine; 

 500 to 1200. Scholastic medicine; 1200 to 1600. Systematic medicine; 

 1600-1825. 



4. Modern medicine; since about 1825. 



Greek Medicine. — The early medicine of the Greeks, as of other 

 peoples, had mythologic and theologic characteristics. The god of 

 medicine among them was Asclepios, or (Latinized) iEsculapius, who 

 perhaps was a real physician flourishing prior to 1000 B.C. The 

 temples devoted to his cult, called Asclepieia, were located in salubrious 

 situations, or at mineral springs; invalids resorted to these institutions 

 in large numbers, and were ministered to by the physician-priests. 

 Famous Asclepieia were situated at Cnidos, Cos, Epidaurus, Pergamus, 

 Tricca, Mycenae and Sicyon. Gradually there developed in connection 

 with these institutions associations or guilds of physicians called Ascle- 

 piadas, who devoted their entire time to medical practise and instruc- 

 tion and had no priestly functions. The separation and differentiation 

 of the functions of the physicians from the priesthood marked an im- 

 portant step in the evolution of medicine, as it left medicine and the 

 medical profession free to develop along independent lines, entirely 

 dissociated from priestcraft. These associations of Asclepiadse formed 

 schools for medical instruction and were centers of medical thought 

 and influence. Such schools or guilds were located in Cnidos (Asia 

 Minor), Cos (one of the iEgaean Islands), Ehodes, Cyrene (north 

 Africa), and Crotona (Italy). The two most noted were those of 

 Cnidos and Cos. Literary remains from the school of Cnidos have 

 probably survived in the Hippocratic writings; while the school of Cos, 

 which was flourishing prior to 500 B.C., produced the illustrious Hippo- 

 crates. 



Hippocrates lived from about 460 to 377 B.C., a period when Greek 

 culture and civilization were at their zenith. Originally trained in 

 the temple and school of Cos, he traveled extensively and resided and 

 practised in various places. His fame is derived from his writings. Of 

 the works attributed to him, about sixty in number, only some ten to 

 seventeen are regarded by the critics as being indisputably his produc- 

 tion, the rest having been written by others before and afterward. 



The Hippocratic writings constitute a systematic and comprehen- 

 sive presentation of medical and surgical observations, doctrines and 

 practise. Especial attention was given to prognosis, dietetics and 

 meteorological conditions as causes 'of disease ; and the beginning was 

 presented of the humoral pathology, which for ages dominated medi- 

 cine. All this mass of knowledge and doctrine could hardly have been 

 discovered or elaborated by Hippocrates himself, but was probably 

 mainly the accumulated knowledge of his predecessors first placed in 

 literary form by him, and illuminated by his own keen observation,, 

 criticism and individuality. 



