10 THE ACTION OF THE LIVING CELL 



recorded that the early Egyptian pyramid builder 

 Imhotep (4,000 B.C.), who, it is believed, was deified 

 as Esculapius, the Greek god of medicine, believed 

 that injury, traumatic or otherwise, produced its ef- 

 fects by "not something entering from the outside," 

 but by "the intrusion of something which the flesh en- 

 genders." Breasted remarks, "This rational distinc- 

 tion is unmistakable, and demonstrates the surgeon's 

 ability to discriminate judiciously in the world of ob- 

 jective phenomena and natural causes." 



It will be noted that Imhotep's intuitive conclusion 

 is exactly the same as that which has been reached 

 by Loeb and others in order to explain certain tropistic 

 responses in plants and animals. At the present time 

 we hear a good deal about the therapeutic effects of 

 sunlight, and by analogy to the interpretation of the 

 phototropic response in plants, we may imagine that 

 in the animal external radiation stimulates the release 

 of some substance from the tissues which is of benefit 

 to the body as a whole. This conclusion was likewise 

 known to the early Egyptians. Together with other 

 aspects of Egyptian culture, this knowledge was 

 passed on to the Greeks, who constructed the first cele- 

 brated solarium, which was conducted by the great 

 physician Hippocrates on the island of Coz. This 

 solarium was dedicated to the temple of Esculapius, 

 and the observed beneficial effects of sunlight were 

 supposed to be due to its power to release the "some- 

 thing which the flesh engenders." 



Further, it was recognized by the early Egyptians 

 that the process of wound healing must depend upon 

 a stimulating substance released by the injured tis- 

 sues. Consequently their physicians attempted to 

 stimulate the healing of wounds by binding fresh flesh 



