GREEK SCIENCE IN EARLY ATTIC PERIOD 



the god of medicine, ^sculapius, and sick persons 

 made their way, or were carried, to these temples, where 

 they sought to gain the favor of the god by suitable 

 offerings, and learn the way to regain their health 

 through remedies or methods revealed to them in 

 dreams by the god. When the patient had been thus 

 cured, he placed a tablet in the temple describing his 

 sickness, and telling by what method the god had cured 

 him. He again made suitable offerings at the temple, 

 which were sometimes in the form of gold or silver 

 representations of the diseased organ a gold or silver 

 model of a heart, hand, foot, etc. 



Nevertheless, despite this belief in the supernatural, 

 many drugs and healing lotions were employed, and 

 the Greek physicians possessed considerable skill in 

 dressing wounds and bandaging. But they did not 

 depend upon these surgical dressings alone, using with 

 them certain appropriate prayers and incantations, 

 recited over the injured member at the time of apply- 

 ing the dressings. 



Even the very early Greeks had learned something of 

 anatomy. The daily contact with wounds and broken 

 bones must of necessity lead to a crude understanding 

 of anatomy in general. The first Greek anatomist, 

 however, who is recognized as such, is said to have been 

 Alcmaeon. He is said to have made extensive dis- 

 sections of the lower animals, and to have described 

 many hitherto unknown structures, such as the optic 

 nerve and the Eustachian canal the small tube lead- 

 ing into the throat from the ear. He is credited with 

 many unique explanations of natural phenomena, such 

 as, for example, the explanation that "hearing is pro- 



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