190 PROFESSIONAL INSTITUTIONS. 



Facts of congruous kinds are thus remarked on by Draper : 



&quot;In the Talmudic literature there are all the indications of a trans 

 itional state, so far as medicine is concerned ; the supernatural seems 

 to be passing into the physical, the ecclesiastical is mixed up with the 

 exact ; thus a rabbi may cure disease by the ecclesiastical operation of 

 laying on of hands; but of febrile disturbances, an exact, though 

 erroneous explanation is given, and paralysis of the hind legs of an 

 animal is correctly referred to the pressure of a tumour on the spinal 

 cord.&quot; 



Concerning the origin of the medical man among the 

 Hindoos, whose history is so much complicated by succes 

 sively superposed governments and religions, the evidence 

 is confused. Accounts agree, however, in the assertion that 

 medicine was of divine origin: evidently implying its 

 descent through the priesthood. In the introduction to 

 Charaka s work, medical knowledge is said to have indirectly 

 descended from Brahma to Indra, while &quot;Bharadvaja learnt 

 it from Indra, and imparted it to six Rishis, of whom Ag- 

 nivasa was one.&quot; The association of medical practice with 

 priestly functions is also implied in the statement of Hunter 

 that &quot; the national astronomy and the national medicine 

 of India alike derived their first impulses from the exigen 

 cies of the national worship.&quot; The same connexion was 

 shown during the ascendancy of Buddhism. &quot; The science 

 was studied in the chief centres of Buddhist civilization, 

 such as the great monastic university of Xalanda, near 

 Gaya.&quot; 



Similar was the genesis of the medical profession among 

 the Greeks. &quot; The science [of medicine] was regarded as 

 of divine origin, and . . . the doctors continued, in a cer 

 tain sense, to be accounted the descendants of Asclepios.&quot; 

 As we read in Grote 



&quot;The many families or gentes called Asklepiads, who devoted 

 themselves to the study and practice of medicine, and who princi 

 pally dwelt near the temples of Asklepius, whither sick and suffering- 

 men came to obtain relief all recognised the god [Asklepius], not 

 merely as the object of their common worship, but also as their actual 

 progenitor.&quot; 



