WOMEN IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY 267 



One of the most beautiful pictures in the Iliad is that 

 representing the daughter of Augea, King of the Epei, 

 caring for the wounded and suffering Greeks on the plain 

 before Troy. She was: 



"His eldest born, hight Agamede, with golden hair, 

 A leech was she, and well she knew all herbs on ground that 

 grew." 



Nothing deterred by the din of battle around her, she pro- 

 vided cordial potions for the disabled warrior and prepared 



"The gentle bath and washed their gory wounds." 



What a beautiful prototype of another ministering angel 

 in the same land nearly thirty centuries later, amid similar 

 scenes of suffering of one who, though unsung by immor- 

 tal bard, the world will never let die the courageous, the 

 self-sacrificing Florence Nightingale. 



That there were in Greece from the earliest times numer- 

 ous women possessed of a high degree of medical skill is 

 evidenced by many of the ancient writers. They were 

 what we would call medical herbalists, and not a few of 

 them exhibited a natural genius for determining the cur- 

 ative virtues of rare plants and a remarkable sagacity in 

 preparing from them juices, infusions and soothing ano- 

 dynes. Others there were who, in addition to evincing the 

 cunning of leechcraft in the therapeutic art, were distin- 

 guished for nimble hands in treating painful lesions and 

 festering sores, and who, when occasion required, were 

 experts in "quickly drawing the barb from the flesh and 

 healing the wound of the soldier." 



In the Odyssey special mention is made of the surpassing 

 expertness of the Egyptian female leech, Polydamna, whose 

 name signifies the subduer of many diseases. The land of 

 the Nile, the poet tells us, "teems with drugs, " and 



"There ev'ry man in skill medicinal 

 Excels, for these are sons of Paeon all," 



