336 THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES AND MEDICINE. 



vegetable physiology on the other, attained a stage of 

 development such that they were able to furnish a sound 

 basis for scientific agriculture. Similarly, medicine took 

 its rise in the practical needs of mankind. At first, 

 studied without reference to any other branch of knowl- 

 edge, it long maintained, indeed still to some extent 

 maintains, that independence. Historically, its connec- 

 tion with the biological sciences has been slowly estab- 

 lished, and the full extent and intimacy of that connec- 

 tion 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 philosophical 

 necessity has become an historical reality, may not be 

 devoid of interest, possibly of instruction, to the mem- 

 bers 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, astron- 

 omy ; 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 ^Esculapius; 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. 

 Yotive 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 Asclepiads com- 



