nsion of future danger." Thus
wrote the Roman historian, and Gibbon states that when we discount as
much of this as we please as rhetorical and declamatory, the fact
remains that the substance of this description is in accordance with the
facts of history. Never until the Christian era was any thought given to
the regular care of the helpless and the abject. Slaves were often
treated like cattle, and the patricians had no bond of sympathy with the
plebeians. Provisions were sometimes distributed to the poor, and taxes
remitted, but for reasons of State and not from truly charitable
motives. Authority was also given to parents to destroy new-born infants
whom they could not support. The idea of establishing public
institutions for the relief of the sick and the poor did not enter the
minds of the ancient Romans.

Before considering the state of the healing art throughout the period of
the Roman Empire, it is necessary to devote the next chapters to a
consideration of the rise and progress of medical science in Greece,
for it cannot be too strongly emphasized that Roman philosophy and Roman
medicine were borrowed from the Greeks, and it is certain also that the
Greeks were indebted to the Egyptians for part of their medical
knowledge. The Romans were distinguished for their genius for law-giving
and government, the Greeks for philosophy, art, and mental culture
generally.

[Illustration: Plate I. BUST OF AESCULAPIUS.]

CHAPTER II.

EARLY GREEK MEDICINE.

Apollo--AEsculapius--Temples--Serpents--Gods of
Health--Melampus--Homer--Machaon--Podalarius--Temples of
AEsculapius--Methods of Treatment--Gymnasia--Classification of
Renouard--Pythagoras--Democedes--Greek Philosophers.

The history of healing begins in the Hellenic mythology with Apollo, the
god of light and the promoter of health. In the "Iliad" he is hailed as
the disperser of epidemics, and, in this respect, the ancients were well
informed in attributing destruction of infection to the sun's rays.
Chiron, the Centaur, it was believed, was taught by Apollo and Artemis,
and was the teacher, in turn, of AEsculapius, who probably lived in the
thirteenth century before Christ and was ultimately deified as the Greek
god of medicine. Pindar relates of him:--

"On some the force of charmed strains he tried,
To some the medicated draught applied;
Some limbs he placed the amulets around,
Some from the trunk he cut, and made