HISTORY OF PATHOLOGY 



Much of our experience and knowledge of the diseases of man 

 and of the lower animals has come down to us from antiquity. The 

 gift of observation and the faculty of reasoning, as well as his 

 desire to restore impaired health, impelled primitive man to formu- 

 late some kind of ideas regarding the origin and nature of disease. 

 And as the grade of individual and popular intelligence advanced 

 and as experience grew in value with its transmission from genera- 

 tion to generation by traditions and records, so our conceptions of 

 disease expanded and our knowledge advanced, or on the other hand 

 mistaken ideas took deeper hold or false notions once discarded again 

 came into prominence. History informs us that for some thousands 

 of years there had been attained considerable skill in the art of 

 healing among the Babylonians, Persians. Egyptians, Hindoos, 

 Israelites, Greeks and Romans both among the priests and in the 

 hands of a special class of physicians ; and although religion and 

 superstition, mysticism and philosophical speculation had much in- 

 fluence over it, medicine really w^as possessed of a very notable fund 

 of information. 



In the fourth and fifth centuries before Christ considerable work 

 was done by physicians and naturalists like Alkmseon (B. C. 54o). 

 Hippocrates IT, the son of Heraclides (B. C. 460-375 ) and Aristotle 

 (B. C. 384-323) in the line of dissection of animals for inference 

 to the supposedlv similar structure of the human body, human 

 cadavers being but rarely obtained for purposes of dissection. Dis- 

 semination of the knowledge of medicine -which existed was ad- 

 vanced by the great schools of learning, like the Museum and 

 Serapeum in Alexandria with their magnificent libraries (700,000 

 rolls of papyrus in the Museum and 300,000 in the Serapeum), and 

 by the profuse literature of the Greeks and Romans. To some 

 extent, doubtless, veterinary medicine shared in this; being practised 

 both by the general physicians and by a special class of veterinarians, 

 known as inulonicdici, hippiatrcs (I'TTTros, horse: larpoi, physician), 

 kteiiiatres (kt>}vos, domestic ammsLl ; iarpdi, physician) and vcterinarii; 



