Semi-Centennial Volume. 47 



tagonistic to their well being. During these years the healing art was 

 primitive and crude, and for centuries it struggled along under a de- 

 pressed and deplorable condition. Medical divinities were worshipped by 

 the Greeks and EgjiJtians, and this system was in vogue as late as Alex- 

 ander the Great. There were thirty-six of these human gods, each con- 

 trolling a separate or distinct part of the body. Esculapius was the 

 Greek God of Medicine. He used songs, dances and incantations in the 

 treatment of diseases. One of his principal remedies for internal treat- 

 ment contained wine, meal and cheese. In the sixth century we find 

 Pithagoras, a pious fraud, with Empericlees and Anaxagoras as fol- 

 lowers. 



Their knowledge of drugs was crude, vague and indefinite, and their 

 practice of medicine was replete with superstition. Five hundred years 

 before the Christian era, quack nostrums were sold in the cities of 

 Greece. In this sunset splendor of the nineteenth century, ^^^th all our 

 boasted intelligence, they are a strong factor with the people. This 

 superstition of the ages clings to our skirts, and through the ages 

 past it has been a strong factor against the advancement of medical 

 science. Anatomy, chemistry and physiology were in fact unborn when 

 Hippocrates entered the field of medicine. There was a force, termed 

 by him Nature, and upon this he relied. His patholosrj- was humoral. 

 Many terms used by him are still retained, as acute, chronic, epidemic, 

 sporatic, benign and malignant. 



The dogmatical school of Hippocrates was confronted by a rival 

 known as the empirical. They were strongly antagonistic, and contested 

 for the supremacy. During this contention the field was entered by an- 

 other sect, known as the methodical. Asclepiades was the founder. He 

 possessed little knowledge of the fundamentals of medicine. Soon fol- 

 lowed the pneumatic and eclectic. Galen, A. D. 130, entered the field as 

 an eclectic, but soon became prominent as a dogmatical figure. As a 

 result of his efforts this school came to the forefront for sixteen cen- 

 turies. He looked upon medicine as an art that taught how to preserve 

 health and cure disease. 



He treated fevers inhumanly and barbarously; windows closed, extra 

 covers used, and hot drinks; nothing of a cooling nature permitted. 



With Galen's death the dog^natical system of medicine began to de- 

 cline. 



In the early part of the Christian era a strong belief was preva- 

 lent that a supernatural power had been transmitted to the elders of 

 the church, whereby disease was cured through the intervention of 

 Providence. This idea of ignorance and superstition predominated down 

 to 131.5 A. n. Exalted virtues were also ascribed to medicines that were 

 prepared during the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter. From 415 B C. 

 down to 1800 A. D . the iron hand of ignorance and superstition held sway. 

 At that time the rational age of medicine came into the field, and step by 

 step, slowly but surely, she has advanced to the honorable and exalted 

 position that she now occupies. Prior to the eighteenth century all 

 animal, vegetable and mineral substances had been used in the treat- 

 ment of diseases. In the animal kingdom were the flesh of lizards. 



