Page 45 - My FlipBook

CHAPTER V.

THE GREEKS.

An ancient Greek ph\sician—Asklepif)s, afterward called /'Escu-
lapius^—bv the abilit\ he disphued in the art of healing, so impressed
the minds of the simple and uncultured at that prniiirne epoch as to be
held in repute rather as a god than as a man. Not onl\ was he held to
be the author of wonderful cures, but it was also afHrmed that he had
resuscitated the dead; no doubt from his having in some case or other ot
apparent death restored the individual to consciousness by the assistance
he rendered him. Exaggeration, so natural to ignorant minds, after-
ward did the rest, and magnified the healing and restoring powers of
^sculapius to such an extent that it is not to be wondered at that he
should have been looked upon as a divine being. With the lapse of time,
various traditions formed around his name, among which there was,
however, finally such discrepancy that the popular voice spoke no more
of one, but of many ^sculapii,- and to one of these was attributed,
among other merits, that of having invented the probe and the art of
bandaging wounds, while another was held to be the inventor of purga-
tives and of the extraction of teeth.
According, therefore, to these traditions, dental surgerv had its origin
with .Esculapius, the god of Medicine. But what was the precise epoch
in which this benefactor of humanity lived .'
We learn from Homer that two sons of /Esculapius, Machaon and
Podalirius,^ took special part, as doctors, in the siege of Troy. This
celebrated siege, which lasted ten years, took place in the twelfth century
before the Christian era (that is, 1193 to 1184 B.C.); admitting, therefore,
the account of the parentage to be authentic, one may argue therefrom
that .^sculapius must have lived between the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries B.C. Many temples were built and dedicated to ^sculapius ;
these were called asklepeia, after the Greek form of his name. The priests
were called Asklepiadi, and alleged their direct descent from .^sculapms
hmiself.

' The Greek name Asklepios became in the Latin, .T.sculapius; the two names are there-
fore equivalents.
^ See Cicero, De Natura deorum, hb. iii, chap. xxii.
^ [Homer speaks of them as "two excellent physicians," and refers to Machaon as a
blameless physician," and admits that "a medical man is e(|uivalent to many others."
Their renown was continued in a poem of Arctinus, wherein one was represented as
without a rival in surgery, the other as sagacious in detecting morbid symptoms.—C. M.J