328 THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES AND MEDICINE. [LECT. 



other, attained a stage of development such that they 

 were able to furnish a sound basis for scientific agri- 

 culture. Similarly, medicine took its rise in the 

 practical needs of mankind. At first, studied without 

 reference to any other branch of knowledge, it long 

 maintained, indeed still to some extent maintains, 

 that independence. Historically, its connection with 

 the biological sciences has been slowly established, 

 and the full extent and intimacy of that connection 

 are only now beginning to be apparent. I trust I 

 have not been mistaken in supposing that an attempt 

 to give a brief sketch of the steps by which a philo- 

 sophical necessity has become an historical reality, 

 may not be devoid of interest, possibly of instruction, 

 to the members of this great Congress, profoundly 

 interested as all are in the scientific development of 

 medicine. 



The history of medicine is more complete and 

 fuller than that of any other science, except, perhaps, 

 astronomy ; and, if we follow back the long record as 

 far as clear evidence lights us, we find ourselves taken 

 to the early stages of the civilisation of Greece. The 

 oldest hospitals were the temples of JSsculapius ; to 

 these Asclepeia, always erected on healthy sites, hard 

 by fresh springs and surrounded by shady groves, the 

 sick and the maimed resorted to seek the aid of the 

 god of health. Votive tablets or inscriptions recorded 

 the symptoms, no less than the gratitude, of those who 

 were healed; and, from these primitive clinical records, 

 the half-priestly, half -philosophic caste of the Ascle- 

 piads compiled the data upon which the earliest 



