2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



such examples as the woman " "bound by Satan/' the rebuke of 

 the fever, the casting out of the devil which was dumb, the heal- 

 ing of the person whom " the devil of ttimes casteth into the fire " 

 of which case one of the greatest modern physicians remarks 

 that never was there a truer description of epilepsy and various 

 other examples, show this same inevitable mode of thought as a 

 refracting medium through which the teachings and doings of 

 the Great Physician were revealed to future generations. 



The civilization of Greece alone appears to have been wholly 

 or nearly free from this idea of the agency of demons in producing 

 bodily ills ; hence, Greece was the first of the ancient nations, 

 and indeed the only one, so far as we know, in which a scientific 

 idea of medicine was evolved. Five hundred years before Christ, 

 in the great bloom period of thought, the period of JEschylus, 

 Phidias, Pericles, Socrates, and Plato, Hippocrates appeared, and 

 his is one of the greatest names in all history. Quietly but thor- 

 oughly he broke away from the old tradition, developed scientific 

 thought, and laid the foundations of medical science upon expe- 

 rience, observation, and reason so deeply and broadly that his 

 teaching remains to this hour among the most precious possessions 

 of our race. 



His thought was passed on to the School of Alexandria, and 

 there medical science was developed yet further, especially by 

 such men as Herophilus and Erasistratus. Under their lead 

 studies in human anatomy began by dissection ; the old prejudice 

 which had weighed so long upon the human race, preventing that 

 method of anatomical investigation without which there can be 

 no real results, was cast aside apparently forever.* 



But with the coming in of Christianity a great new chain of 

 events was set in motion which modified most profoundly the 

 further evolution of medical science. The influence of Christi- 



* For extended statements regarding medicine in Egypt, Judea, and Eastern nations 

 generally, see Sprengel, Histoire de la Medecine, earlier volumes ; and for more succinct 

 accounts, Baas, Geschichte der Medicin, pp. 15-29; also Isensee ; also Fredault, His- 

 toire de la Medecine, chap. i. For the effort in Egyptian medicine to deal with demons 

 and witches, see Heinrich Brugsch, Die Aegyptologie, Leipsic, 1891, p. 77; and for refer- 

 ences to the Papyrus Ebers, etc., pp. 155, 407, and following. For the derivation of 

 priestly medicine in Egypt, see Baas, p. 22. For the fame of Egyptian medicine at Rome, 

 see Sharpe, History of Egypt, vol. ii, pp. 151 and 184. On the cheapness and commonness 

 of miracles of healing in antiquity, see Sharpe, quoting St. Jerome, vol. ii, pp. 137, 191. 

 As to the freedom of ancient Greece from the idea of demoniacal intervention in disease, 

 see Lecky, History of European Morals, vol. i, p. 404 and note. For the evolution of medi- t 

 cine before and after Hippocrates, see Sprengel, p. 12S3 and following. For a good sum- 

 ming up of the work of Hippocrates, see Baas, p. 201. For the necessary passage of 

 medicine in its early stages under priestly control, see Cabanis, The Revolutions of Medical 

 Science, London, 1S06, chap. ii. On Jewish ideas regarding demons, and their relation to 

 sickness, see Toy, Judaism and Christianity, Boston, 1891, pp. 108 d srq. For Herophilus, 

 Erasistratus, and the School of Alexandria, see Sprengel, vol. i, pp. 433, 434 et seq. 



