XIV BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES AND MEDICINE 351 



The histor}'- of medicine is more complete and 

 fuller than that of any other science, except, per- 

 haps, astronomy; and, if we follow back the long 

 record as far as clear evidence lights ns, we find 

 ourselves taken to the early stages of the civilisa- 

 tion of Greece. The oldest hospitals were the 

 temples of iEsculapius; to these Asclepeia, al- 

 ways erected on healthy sites, hard by fresh springs 

 and surrounded by shady groves, the sick and the 

 maimed resorted to seek the aid of the god of 

 health. Votive tablets or inscriptions recorded 

 the symptoms, no less than the gratitude, of those 

 who were healed; and, from these primitive clin- 

 ical records, the half-priestly, half-philosophic 

 caste of the Asclepiads compiled the data upon 

 Avhich the earliest generalisations of medicine, as 

 an inductive science, were based. 



In this state, pathology, like all the inductive 

 sciences at their origin, was merely natural 

 history; it registered the phenomena of disease, 

 classified them, and ventured upon a prognosis, 

 wherever the observation of constant co-existences 

 and sequences suggested a rational expectation 

 of the like recurrence under similar circum- 

 stances. 



Further than this it hardly went. In fact, in 

 the then state of knowledge, and in the condition 

 of philosophical speculation at that time, neither 

 the causes of the morbid state, nor the rationale 

 of treatment, were likely to be sought for as we 



