INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 
603 
memories, can add to it, as many of these foolish customs are 
yet retained by the ignorant and the charlatan. Still, 
extraordinary as it may seem to us, some of our wisest and 
best men were believers in these so-called remedies; but you 
will bear in mind, that in their day science had not made 
such advances as it has in ours ; and vague and conjectural 
opinions were entertained by them, arising from the con- 
stitution of the agents employed not being then known. 
Moreover, there is this difference always to be observed : 
“Science renders the powers of nature the servants of man, 
while empiricism reverses this, and subjects man to their 
service.” (Liebig). And “although man cannot create, he 
can employ the created. 5 Tis his to investigate the physical 
laws that govern matter, and the organic laws that govern 
life. He can likewise seize the subtil elements — heat, light, 
and electricity; bind them as coursers to his chariot, and 
compel them to do his bidding.” 
But to my subject. By the ancients medicine was con- 
sidered a science worthy of the Gods. And true it is that 
kings and princes, and those who ministered at the altar, 
became its dispensers. It is also well known that the earlier 
physicians practised the veterinary art in common with that 
of human medicine ; and since the powers of’ life are the same 
in one animal as the other, the laws that govern them the 
same, and the physical agents operating on them every 
moment of their existence the same, what wonder is it that 
such a union should have once existed ? 
The earlier history of this science is involved in obscurity, 
through the lapse of ages. Its origin may have been nearly 
coeval with the fall of man, when he had eaten of — 
“ The fruit 
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste 
Brought death into our world, and all our woe 
for then, and not till then, did disease exist. 
We are told by Herodotus that the Chaldeans and 
Babylonians placed their sick in the public roads and markets 
so that passers by might communicate to them the remedies 
they had seen used in similar cases. The Egyptians, who 
were famed for their medical knowledge, took them to the 
temple of their God Serapis, and thus the priests became 
the first dispensers of medicine. The Greeks surpassed the 
Egyptians both in learning and science, and among them 
lived Esculapius, the reputed father of physic, whom 
the mythologists make the son of Apollo. A temple was 
dedicated to him in Greece, and there diseases with their 
