BOOK II. 



CHAPTER I. 



ESCULAPIUS, 



"Man is God wholly manifested. God has become Man, zero has 



become -\ . Man is the whole of arithmetic, compacted, however, 



out of all numbers ; he can therefore produce numbers out of him- 

 self. Man is a complex of all that surrounds him, namely, of ele- 

 ment, mineral, plant, and animal." OKEN. 



THE regular profession of medicine, called the "Faculty," 

 " Hippocratic," or " Old School," boasts a genealogy time- 

 honored and ancient as the earth. From its present noon- 

 day splendor of light and science it goes into the obscurity 

 of the past for more than two thousand years of authentic 

 history, and still on through realms of myths and dreams, 

 until, in the mists and shadows of primeval worlds, it mingles 

 its exegesis with the fables of the gods. These stories of 

 the ages, these legends of the sages, have nothing in them 

 accidental, arbitrary, or factitious; for myths are but sha- 

 dows of more transcendent facts, having necessary and im- 

 mortal existence in the depths of nature and the soul. 



The profession of the healing art, divine in its origin, 

 grave and grand in its scientific evolution, sacred and sub- 

 lime in its ultimate functions, stands as a necessary part of 

 the order of things, old as humanity, and inseparable from 

 its existence upon earth ; for when did not man suffer, and 

 when did not his brother try to relieve him ? Synchronous 

 with man's advent upon the planet, the chronicles of this 



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