488 THE MOUNTAIN. 



origin and nature of Apollo, one point is certain, and at- 

 tested by thousands of facts, that Apollo and his worship, 

 his festivals and oracles, had more influence upon the Greeks 

 than any other god. It may be safely asserted, that the 

 Greeks would never have become what they were, without 

 the worship of Apollo ; in him the brightest side of the 

 Grecian mind is reflected." This radiant Olympian, proud- 

 est in his power of the supernals, the proper creator of Gre- 

 cian thought and art, was accounted the father of JEscu- 

 lapius, the special God of Medicine. That his temple, at 

 Delphi in Phocis, should be situated on the hill Parnassus, 

 " umbilicus orbis terrarum,' r the centre of the world, at once 

 reveals the fact, "that deep wisdom lies under these fables 

 of time," that the ancient poet was a seer, and, in giving a 

 supernatural origin to an art the most honored and useful 

 of the callings of men, he but uttered the voice of that 

 "necessity which is the mother of the world." Let all honor 

 be given to the ancients ; all veneration to the gods of 

 Olympus. 



From this proud height of thought and art ; from this 

 ancient Eden of Grecian poetry and philosophy, itself 

 stretching into still more venerable and primeval soli- 

 tudes of time, comes the regular profession of medicine 

 of this hour. Down to this moment it has struggled 

 through ages of the soul's travail ; through time-honored 

 battlings with worlds of night and chaos, ignorance and 

 darkness ; through dawnings of light ; through manifold 

 tribulations and difficulties ; through the ceaseless efforts of 

 the best brains and hearts the races have ever produced ; 

 still on, until, in the blaze and splendor of the inductive pro- 

 cess of reasoning, the absolute of medical science was re- 

 vealed, and now stands, with its granite peaks of " positive 

 philosophy," in the light and glory of an everlasting day. 



Still, while we gaze with awe into the past, and reverence 

 with filial veneration the old following that magical river 

 into the charmed land, where fact and fable dance in the 

 dawn of thought and reason, and men and gods interact 



