The Physicians of Athens.
63. The Beginnings of Greek Medical Science.—As we move about the city
we cannot but be impressed by the high average of fine physiques and
handsome faces. Your typical Greek is fair in color and has very
regular features. The youths do not mature rapidly, but thanks to the
gymnasia and the regular lives, they develop not merely admirable, but
healthy, bodies. The proportion of hale and hearty _old_ men is great;
and probably the number of invalids is considerably smaller than in
later times and in more artificially reared communities.[*]
Nevertheless, the Athenians are certainly mortal, and subject to bodily
ills, and the physician is no unimportant member of society, although
his exact status is much less clearly determined than it will be in
subsequent ages.
[*] A slight but significant witness to the general healthiness of the
Greeks is found in the very rare mention in their literature of such a
common ill as _toothache_.
Greek medicine and surgery, as it appears in Homer, is simply a certain
amount of practical knowledge gained by rough experience, largely
supplemented by primitive superstition. It was quite as important to
know the proper prayers and charms wherewith to approach “Apollo the
Healer,” as to understand the kind of herb poultice which would keep
wounds from festering. Homer speaks of Asclepius; however, in early
days he was not a god, but simply a skilful leach. Then as we approach
historic times the physician’s art becomes more regular. Asclepius is
elevated into a separate and important deity, although it is not till
420 B.C. that his worship is formally introduced into Athens. Long ere
that time, however, medicine and surgery had won a real place among the
practical sciences. The sick man stands at least a tolerable chance of
rational treatment, and of not being murdered by wizards and fanatical
exorcists.
64. Healing Shrines and their Methods.—There exist in Athens and in
other Greek cities real sanataria[*]; these are temples devoted to the
healing gods (usually Asclepius, but sometimes Apollo, Aphrodite, and
Hera). Here the patient is expected to sleep over night in the temple,
and the god visits him in a dream, and reveals a course of treatment
which will lead to recovery. Probably there is a good deal of sham and
imposture about the process. The canny priests know more than they
care to tell about how the patient is worked into an excitable,
imaginative state; and of the very human means employed to produce a
satisfactory and informing dream.[+] Nevertheless it is a great deal to
convince the patient that he is sure of recovery, and that nobody less
than a god has dictated the remedies. The value of mental therapeutics
is keenly appreciated. Attached to the temple are skilled physicians to
“interpret” the dream, and opportunities for prolonged residence with
treatment by baths, purgation, dieting, mineral waters, sea baths, all
kinds of mild gymnastics, etc. Entering upon one of these temple
treatments is, in short anything but surrendering oneself to
unmitigated quackery. Probably a large proportion of the former
patients have recovered; and they have testified their gratitude by
hanging around the shrine little votive tablets,[$] usually pictures of
the diseased parts now happily healed, or, for internal maladies, a
written statement of the nature of the disease. This is naturally very
encouraging to later patients: they gain confidence knowing that many
cases similar to their own have been thus cured.
[*] The most famous was at Epidaurus, where the Asclepius cult seems to
have been especially localized.
[+] The “healing sleep” employed at these temples is described, in a
kind of blasphemous parody, in Aristophanes’s _Plutus_. (Significant
passages are quoted in Davis’s _Readings in Ancient History_, vol. I,
pp. 258-261.)
[$] Somewhat as in the various Catholic pilgrimage shrines (_e.g._
Lourdes) to-day.
These visits to the healing temples are, however, expensive: not
everybody has entire faith in them; for many lesser ills also they are
wholly unnecessary. Let us look, then, at the regular physicians.
65. An Athenian Physician’s Office.—There are salaried public medical
officers in Athens, and something like a public dispensary where free
treatment is given citizens in simple cases; but the average man seems
to prefer his own doctor.[*] We may enter the office of Menon, a
“regular private practitioner,” and look about us. The office itself
is a mere open shop in the front of a house near the Agora; and, like a
barber’s shop is something of a general lounging place. In the rear
one or two young disciples (doctors in embryo) and a couple of slaves
are pounding up drugs in mortars. There are numbers of bags of dried
herbs and little glass flasks hanging on the walls. Near the entrance
is a statue of Asclepius the Healer, and also of the great human
founder of the real medical science among the Greeks—Hippocrates.
[*] We know comparatively little of these public physicians; probably
they were mainly concerned with the health of the army and naval force,
the prevention of epidemics, etc.
Menon himself is just preparing to go out on his professional calls.
He is a handsome man in the prime of his life, and takes great pains
with his personal appearance. His himation is carefully draped. His
finger rings have excellent cameos. His beard has been neatly trimmed,
and he has just bathed and scented himself with delicate Assyrian nard.
He will gladly tell you that he is in no wise a fop, but that it is
absolutely necessary to produce a pleasant personal impression upon his
fastidious, irritable patients. Menon himself claims to have been a
personal pupil of the great Hippocrates,[*] and about every other
reputable Greek physician will make the same claim. He has studied
more or less in a temple of Asclepius, and perhaps has been a member of
the medical staff thereto attached. He has also become a member of the
Hippocratic brotherhood, a semi-secret organization, associated with
the Asclepius cult, and cheerfully cherishing the dignity of the
profession and the secret arts of the guild.
[*] Who was still alive, an extremely old man. He died in Thessaly in
357 B.C., at an alleged age of 104 years.
66. The Physician’s Oath.—The oath which all this brotherhood has
sworn is noble and notable. Here are some of the main provisions:—
“I swear by Apollo the Physician, and Asclepius and Hygeia; a [Lady
Health] and Panaceia [Lady All-Cure] to honor as my parents the master
who taught me this art, and to admit to my own instruction only his
sons, my own sons, and those who have been duly inscribed as pupils,
and who have taken the medical oath, and no others. I will prescribe
such treatment as may be for the benefit of my patients, according to
my best power and judgment, and preserve them from anything hurtful or
mischievous. I will never, even if asked, administer poison, nor
advise its use. I will never give a criminal draught to a woman. I
will maintain the purity and integrity of my art. Wherever I go, I
will abstain from all mischief or corruption, or any immodest action.
If ever I hear any secret I will not divulge it. If I keep this oath,
may the gods give me success in life and in my art. If I break this
oath, may all the reverse fall upon me.”[*]
[*] For the unabridged translation of this oath, see Smith’s
_Dictionary of Antiquities_ (revised edition), vol. II, p. 154.
67. The Skill of Greek Physicians.—Menon’s skill as a physician and
surgeon is considerable. True, he has only a very insufficient
conception of anatomy. His _theoretical_ knowledge is warped, but he
is a shrewd judge of human nature and his _practical_ knowledge is not
contemptible. In his private pharmacy his assistants have compounded a
great quantity of drugs which he knows how to administer with much
discernment. He has had considerable experience in dealing with wounds
and sprains, such as are common in the wars or in the athletic games.
He understands that Dame Nature is a great healer, who is to be
assisted rather than coerced; and he dislikes resorting to violent
remedies, such as bleedings and strong emetics. Ordinary fevers and
the like he can attack with success. He has no modern anæsthetics or
opium, but has a very insufficient substitute in mandragora. He can
treat simple diseases of the eye; and he knows how to put gold filling
into teeth. His surgical instruments, however, are altogether too
primitive. He is personally cleanly; but he has not the least idea of
antiseptics; the result is that obscure internal diseases, calling for
grave operations, are likely to baffle him. He will refuse to operate,
or if he does operate the chances are against the patient.[*] In other
words, his medical skill is far in advance of his surgery.
[*] Seemingly a really serious operation was usually turned over by the
local physician to a traveling surgeon, who could promptly disappear
from the neighborhood if things went badly.
Menon naturally busies himself among the best families of Athens, and
commands a very good income. He counts it part of his equipment to be
able to persuade his patients, by all the rules of logic and rhetoric,
to submit to disagreeable treatment; and for that end has taken lessons
in informal oratory from Isocrates or one of his associates. Some of
Menon’s competitors (feeling themselves less eloquent) have actually a
paid rhetorician whom they can take to the bedside of a stubborn
invalid, to induce him by irrefutable arguments to endure an
amputation.[*]
[*] Plato tells how Gorgias, the famous rhetorician, was sometimes thus
hired. A truly Greek artifice—this substitution of oratory for
chloroform!
No such honor of course is paid to the intellects of the poorer fry,
who swarm in at Menon’s surgery. Those who cannot pay to have him
bandage them himself, perforce put up with the secondary skill and
wisdom of the “disciples.” The drug-mixing slaves are expected to
salve and physic the patients of their own class; but there seems to be
a law against allowing them to attempt the treatment of free-born men.
68. Quacks and Charlatans.—Unluckily not everybody is wise enough to
put up with the presumably honest efforts of Menon’s underlings. There
appears to be no law against anybody who wishes to pose as a physician,
and to sell his inexperience and his quack nostrums. Vendors of every
sort of cure-all abound, as well as creatures who work on the
superstitions and pretend to cure by charms and hocus-pocus. In the
market there is such a swarm of these charlatans of healing that they
bring the whole medical profession into contempt. Certain people go so
far as to distrust the efficacy of any part of the lore of Asclepius.
Says one poet tartly:—
The surgeon Menedemos, as men say,
Touched as he passed a Zeus of marble white;
Neither the marble nor his Zeus-ship might
Avail the god—they buried him to-day.
And again even to dream of the quacks is dangerous:—
Diophantes, sleeping, saw
Hermas the physician:
Diophantes never woke
From that fatal vision.[*]
[*] Both of these quotations probably date from later than 360 B.C.,
but they are perfectly in keeping with the general opinion of Greek
quackery.
All in all, despite Menon’s good intentions and not despicable skill,
it is fortunate the gods have made “Good Health” one of their commonest
gifts to the Athenians. Constant exercise in the gymnasia, occasional
service in the army, the absence of cramping and unhealthful office
work, and a climate which puts out-of-door existence at a premium,
secure for them a general good health that compensates for most of the
lack of a scientific medicine.