DIGRESSION ON THE PASSAGE OF THE ARABIANS TO THEIR AGE OF REASON.
INFLUENCE OF MEDICAL IDEAS THROUGH THE NESTORIANS AND JEWS.
_The intellectual Development of the Arabians is guided by the
Nestorians and the Jews, and is in the Medical Direction.--The
Basis of this Alliance is theological._
_Antagonism of the Byzantine System to Scientific
Medicine.--Suppression of the Asclepions.--Their Replacement
by Miracle-cure.--The resulting Superstition and Ignorance._
_Affiliation of the Arabians with the Nestorians and Jews._
_1st. The Nestorians, their Persecutions, and the Diffusion of
their Sectarian Ideas.--They inherit the old Greek Medicine._
_Sub-digression on Greek Medicine.--The
Asclepions.--Philosophical Importance of Hippocrates, who
separates Medicine from Religion.--The School of Cnidos.--Its
Suppression by Constantine._
_Sub-digression on Egyptian Medicine.--It is founded on
Anatomy and Physiology.--Dissections and Vivisections.--The
Great Alexandrian Physicians._
_2nd. The Jewish Physicians.--Their Emancipation from
Superstition.--They found Colleges and promote Science and
Letters._
_The contemporary Tendency to Magic, Necromancy, the Black
Art.--The Philosopher's Stone, Elixir of Life, etc._
_The Arabs originate scientific Chemistry.--Discover the
strong Acids, Phosphorus, etc.--Their geological Ideas.--Apply
Chemistry to the Practice of Medicine.--Approach of the
Conflict between the Saracenic material and the European
supernatural System._
[Sidenote: Importance of the influence of the Arabians.]
The military operations of the Arabians, described in Chapter XI.,
overthrew the Byzantine political system, prematurely closing the Age of
Faith in the East; their intellectual procedure gave rise to an equally
important result, being destined, in the end, to close the Age of Faith
in the West. The Saracens not only destroyed the Italian offshoot, they
also impressed characteristic lineaments on the Age of Reason in Europe.
Events so important make it necessary for me to turn aside from the
special description of European intellectual advancement, and offer a
digression on the passage of the Arabians to their Age of Reason. It is
impossible for us to understand their action in the great drama about to
be performed unless we understand the character they had assumed.
[Sidenote: Their intellectual progress.]
In a few centuries the fanatics of Mohammed had altogether changed their
appearance. Great philosophers, physicians, mathematicians, astronomers,
alchemists, grammarians, had arisen among them. Letters and science, in
all their various departments, were cultivated.
[Sidenote: Their teachers were the Nestorians and Jews.]
A nation stirred to its profoundest depths by warlike emigration, and
therefore ready to make, as soon as it reaches a period of repose, a
rapid intellectual advance, may owe the path in which it is about to
pass to those who are in the position of pointing it out, or of
officiating as teachers. The teachers of the Saracens were the
Nestorians and the Jews.
[Sidenote: Their scientific progress was through medicine.]
It has been remarked that Arabian science emerged out of medicine, and
that in its cultivation physicians took the lead, its beginnings being
in the pursuit of alchemy. In this chapter I have to describe the origin
of these facts, and therefore must consider the state of Greek and
Egyptian medicine, and relate how, wherever the Byzantine system could
reach, true medical philosophy was displaced by relic and shrine-curing;
and how it was, that while European ideas were in all directions
reposing on the unsubstantial basis of the supernatural, those of the
Saracens were resting on the solid foundation of a material support.
When the Arabs conquered Egypt, their conduct was that of bigoted
fanatics; it justified the accusation made by some against them, that
they burned the Alexandrian library for the purpose of heating the
baths. But scarcely were they settled in their new dominion when they
exhibited an extraordinary change. At once they became lovers and
zealous cultivators of learning.
[Sidenote: Causes of their union with Nestorians and Jews.]
The Arab power had extended in two directions, and had been submitted to
two influences. In Asia it had been exposed to the Nestorians, in Africa
to the Jews, both of whom had suffered persecution at the hands of the
Byzantine government, apparently for the same opinion as that which had
now established itself by the sword of Mohammed. The doctrine of the
unity of God was their common point of contact. On this they could
readily affiliate, and hold in common detestation the trinitarian power
at Constantinople. He who is suffering the penalties of the law as a
heretic, or who is pursued by judicial persecution as a misbeliever,
will readily consort with others reputed to cherish similar
infidelities. Brought into unison in Asia with the Nestorians, and in
Africa with the Alexandrian Jews, the Arabians became enthusiastic
admirers of learning.
[Sidenote: Medicine becomes their neutral ground.]
Not that there was between the three parties thus coalescing a complete
harmony of sentiment in the theological direction; for, though the
Nestorians and the Jews were willing to accept one-half of the Arabian
dogma, that there is but one God, they could not altogether commit
themselves to the other, that Mohammed is his Prophet. Perhaps
estrangement on this point might have arisen, but fortunately a
remarkable circumstance opened the way for a complete understanding
between them. Almost from the beginning the Nestorians had devoted
themselves to the study of medicine, and had paid much attention to the
structure and diseases of the body of man; the Jews had long produced
distinguished physicians. These medical studies presented, therefore, a
neutral ground on which the three parties could intellectually unite in
harmony; and so thoroughly did the Arabians affiliate with these their
teachers, that they acquired from them a characteristic mental
physiognomy. Their physicians were their great philosophers; their
medical colleges were their foci of learning. While the Byzantines
obliterated science in theology, the Saracens illuminated it by
medicine.
[Sidenote: Byzantine suppression of medicine.]
[Sidenote: Substitution of public charities.]
When Constantine the Great and his successors, under ecclesiastical
influence, had declared themselves the enemies of worldly learning, it
became necessary for the clergy to assume the duty of seeing to the
physical as well as the religious condition of the people. It was
unsuited to the state of things that physicians, whose philosophical
tendencies inclined them to the pagan party, should be any longer
endured. Their education in the Asclepions imparted to them ideas in
opposition to the new policy. An edict of Constantine suppressed those
establishments, ample provision being, however, made for replacing them
by others more agreeable to the genius of Christianity. Hospitals and
benevolent organizations were founded in the chief cities, and richly
endowed with money and lands. In these merciful undertakings the
empress-mother, Helena, was distinguished, her example being followed by
many high-born ladies. The heart of women, which is naturally open to
the desolate and afflicted, soon gives active expression to its
sympathies when it is sanctified by Christian faith. In this, its
legitimate direction, Christianity could display its matchless
benevolence and charities. Organizations were introduced upon the most
extensive and varied scale; one had charge of foundlings, another of
orphans, another of the poor. We have already alluded to the parabolani
or visitors, and of the manner in which they were diverted from their
original intent.
[Sidenote: Gradual fall into miracle-cure.]
But, noble as were these charities, they laboured under an essential
defect in having substituted for educated physicians well-meaning but
unskilful ecclesiastics. The destruction of the Asclepions was not
attended by any suitably extensive measures for insuring professional
education. The sick who were placed in the benevolent institutions were,
at the best, rather under the care of kind nurses than under the advice
of physicians; and the consequences are seen in the gradually increasing
credulity and imposture of succeeding ages, until, at length, there was
an almost universal reliance on miraculous interventions. Fetiches, said
to be the relics of saints, but no better than those of tropical
Africa, were believed to cure every disorder. To the shrines of saints
crowds repaired as they had at one time to the temples of Æsculapius.
The worshippers remained, though the name of the divinity was changed.
[Sidenote: Closing of the schools of medicine and philosophy.]
Scarcely were the Asclepions closed, the schools of philosophy
prohibited, the libraries dispersed or destroyed, learning branded as
magic or punished as treason, philosophers driven into exile and as a
class exterminated, when it became apparent that a void had been created
which it was incumbent on the victors to fill. Among the great prelates,
who was there to stand in the place of those men whose achievements had
glorified the human race? Who was to succeed to Archimedes, Hipparchus,
Euclid, Herophilus, Eratosthenes? who to Plato and Aristotle? The
quackeries of miracle-cure, shrine-cure, relic-cure, were destined to
eclipse the genius of Hippocrates, and nearly two thousand years to
intervene between Archimedes and Newton, nearly seventeen hundred
between Hipparchus and Kepler. A dismal interval of almost twenty
centuries parts Hero, whose first steam-engine revolved in the Serapion,
from James Watt, who has revolutionized the industry of the world. What
a fearful blank! Yet not a blank, for it had its products--hundreds of
patristic folios filled with obsolete speculation, oppressing the
shelves of antique libraries, enveloped in dust, and awaiting the worm.
[Sidenote: Its deplorable results.]
[Sidenote: Insecurity of the Byzantine system.]
Never was a more disastrous policy adopted than the Byzantine
suppression of profane learning. It is scarcely possible now to realize
the mental degradation produced when that system was at its height. Many
of the noblest philosophical and scientific works of antiquity
disappeared from the language in which they had been written, and were
only recovered, for the use of later and better ages, from translations
which the Saracens had made into Arabic. The insolent assumption of
wisdom by those who held the sword crushed every intellectual
aspiration. Yet, though triumphant for a time, this policy necessarily
contained the seeds of its own ignominious destruction. A day must
inevitably come when so grievous a wrong to the human race must be
exposed, and execrated, and punished--a day in which the poems of Homer
might once more be read, the immortal statues of the Greek sculptors
find worshippers, and the demonstrations of Euclid a consenting
intellect. But that unfortunate, that audacious policy of usurpation
once entered upon, there was no going back. He who is infallible must
needs be immutable. In its very nature the action implied compulsion,
compulsion implied the possession of power, and the whole policy insured
an explosion the moment that the means of compression should be weak.
[Sidenote: Bigotry of the first Saracens.]
[Sidenote: The nobler policy soon pursued.]
It is said that when the Saracens captured Alexandria, their victorious
general sent to the khalif to know his pleasure respecting the library.
The answer was in the spirit of the age. "If the books be confirmatory
of the Koran, they are superfluous; if contradictory, they are
pernicious. Let them be burnt." At this moment, to all human appearance,
the Mohammedan autocrat was on the point of joining in the evil policy
of the Byzantine sovereign. But fortunately it was but the impulse of a
moment, rectified forthwith, and a noble course of action was soon
pursued. The Arab incorporated into his literature the wisdom of those
he had conquered. In thus conceding to knowledge a free and
unembarrassed career, and, instead of repressing, encouraging to the
utmost all kinds of learning did the Koran take any harm? It was a high
statesmanship which, almost from the beginning of the impulse from
Mecca, bound down to a narrow, easily comprehended, and easily expressed
dogma the exacted belief, and in all other particulars let the human
mind go free.
[Sidenote: The true causes of the preceding events.]
In the preceding paragraphs I have criticized the course of events,
condemning or applauding the actions and the actors as circumstances
seem to require, herein following the usual course, which implies that
men can control affairs, and that the agent is to be held responsible
for his deed. We have, however, only to consider the course of our own
lives to be satisfied to how limited an extent such is the case. We are,
as we often say, the creatures of circumstances. In that expression
there is a higher philosophy than might at first sight appear. Our
actions are not the pure and unmingled results of our desires; they are
the offspring of many various and mixed conditions. In that which seems
to be the most voluntary decision there enters much that is altogether
involuntary--more, perhaps, than we generally suppose. And, in like
manner, those who are imagined to have exercised an irresponsible and
spontaneous influence in determining public policy, and thereby fixing
the fate of nations, will be found, when we understand their position
more correctly, to have been the creatures of circumstances altogether
independent and irrespective of them--circumstances which they never
created, of whose influence they only availed themselves. They were
placed in a current which drifted them irresistibly along.
From this more accurate point of view we should therefore consider the
course of these events, recognizing the principle that the affairs of
men pass forward in a determinate way, expanding and unfolding
themselves. And hence we see that the things of which we have spoken as
though they were matters of choice were, in reality, forced upon their
apparent authors by the necessity of the times. But, in truth, they
should be considered as the presentations of a certain phase of life
which nations in their onward course sooner or later assume. In the
individual, how well we know that a sober moderation of action, an
appropriate gravity of demeanour, belong to the mature period of life; a
change from the wanton wilfulness of youth, which may be ushered in, or
its beginning marked, by many accidental incidents: in one perhaps by
domestic bereavements, in another by the loss of fortune, in a third by
ill health. We are correct enough in imputing to such trials the change
of character, but we never deceive ourselves by supposing that it would
have failed to take place had those incidents not occurred. There runs
an irresistible destiny in the midst of all these vicissitudes.
[Sidenote: Succession of affairs determined by law.]
We may therefore be satisfied that, whatever may have been the
particular form of the events of which we have had occasion to speak,
their order of succession was a matter of destiny, and altogether beyond
the reach of any individual. We may condemn the Byzantine monarchs, or
applaud the Arabian khalifs--our blame and our praise must be set at
their proper value. Europe was passing from its Age of Inquiry to its
Age of Faith. In such a transition the predestined underlies the
voluntary. There are analogies between the life of a nation and that of
an individual, who, though he may be in one respect the maker of his own
fortunes for happiness or for misery, for good or for evil, though he
remains here or goes there, as his inclinations prompt, though he does
this or abstains from that as he chooses, is nevertheless held fast by
an inexorable fate--a fate which brought him into the world
involuntarily so far as he was concerned, which presses him forward
through a definite career, the stages of which are absolutely
invariable--infancy, childhood, youth, maturity, old age, with all their
characteristic actions and passions, and which removes him from the
scene at the appointed time, in most cases against his will. So also it
is with nations; the voluntary is only the outward semblance, covering,
but hardly hiding the predetermined. Over the events of life we may have
control, but none whatever over the law of its progress. There is a
geometry that applies to nations, an equation of their curve of advance.
That no mortal man can touch.
[Sidenote: Arabian science in its stage of sorcery.]
We have now to examine in what manner the glimmering lamp of knowledge
was sustained when it was all but ready to die out. By the Arabians it
was handed down to us. The grotesque forms of some of those who took
charge of it are not without interest. They exhibit a strange mixture of
the Neo-platonist, the Pantheist, the Mohammedan, the Christian. In such
untoward times, it was perhaps needful that the strongest passions of
men should be excited and science stimulated by inquiries for methods of
turning lead into gold, or of prolonging life indefinitely. We have now
to deal with the philosopher's stone, the elixir vitæ, the powder of
projection, magical mirrors, perpetual lamps, the transmutation of
metals. In smoky caverns under ground, where the great work is
stealthily carried on, the alchemist and his familiar are busy with
their alembics, cucurbites, and pelicans, maintaining their fires for so
many years that salamanders are asserted to be born in them.
Experimental science was thus restored, though under a very strange
aspect, by the Arabians. Already it displayed its connexion with
medicine--a connexion derived from the influence of the Nestorians and
the Jews. It is necessary for us to consider briefly the relations of
each, and of the Nestorians first.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The Nestorians.]
[Sidenote: They deny the virginity of the queen of heaven.]
[Sidenote: They begin to cultivate medicine.]
[Sidenote: The Arabs affiliate with them.]
In Chapter IX. we have related the rivalries of Cyril, the Bishop of
Alexandria, and Nestorius, the Bishop of Constantinople. The theological
point of their quarrel was whether it is right to regard the Virgin Mary
as the mother of God. To an Egyptian still tainted with ancient
superstition, there was nothing shocking in such a doctrine. His was the
country of Isis. St. Cyril, who is to be looked upon as a mere
ecclesiastical demagogue, found his purposes answered by adopting it
without any scruple. But in Greece there still remained traces of the
old philosophy. A recollection of the ideas of Plato had not altogether
died out. There were some by whom it was not possible for the Egyptian
doctrine to be received. Such, perhaps, was Nestorius, whose sincerity
was finally approved by an endurance of persecutions, by his sufferings,
and his death. He and his followers, insisting on the plain inference of
the last verse of the first chapter of St. Matthew, together with the
fifty-fifth and fifty-sixth verses of the thirteenth of the same Gospel,
could never be brought to an acknowledgment of the perpetual virginity
of the new queen of heaven. We have described the issue of the Council
of Ephesus: the Egyptian faction gained the victory, the aid of court
females being called in, and Nestorius, being deposed from his office,
was driven, with his friends into exile. The philosophical tendency of
the vanquished was soon indicated by their actions. While their leader
was tormented in an African oasis, many of them emigrated to the
Euphrates, and founded the Chaldæan Church. Under its auspices the
college at Edessa, with several connected schools, arose. In these were
translated into Syriac many Greek and Latin works, as those of Aristotle
and Pliny. It was the Nestorians who, in connexion with the Jews,
founded the medical college of Djondesabour, and first instituted a
system of academical honours which has descended to our times. It was
the Nestorians who were not only permitted by the khalifs the free
exercise of their religion, but even intrusted with the education of the
children of the great Mohammedan families, a liberality in striking
contrast to the fanaticism of Europe. The Khalif Alraschid went so far
as even to place all his public schools under the superintendence of
John Masué, one of that sect. Under the auspices of these learned men
the Arabian academies were furnished with translations of Greek authors,
and vast libraries were collected in Asia.
[Sidenote: Their great spread in the East,]
Through this connexion with the Arabs, Nestorian missionaries found
means to disseminate their form of Christianity all over Asia, as far as
Malabar and China. The successful intrigues of the Egyptian politicians
at Ephesus had no influence in those remote countries, the Asiatic
churches of the Nestorian and Jacobite persuasions outnumbering
eventually all the European Christians of the Greek and Roman churches
combined. In later times the papal government has made great exertions
to bring about an understanding with them, but in vain.
[Sidenote: and persecutions in the West.]
The expulsion of this party from Constantinople was accomplished by the
same persons and policy concerned in destroying philosophy in
Alexandria. St. Cyril was the representative of an illiterate and
unscrupulous faction that had come into the possession of power through
intrigues with the females of the imperial court, and bribery of eunuchs
and parasites. The same spirit that had murdered Hypatia tormented
Nestorius to death. Of the contending parties, one was respectable and
had a tincture of learning, the other ignorant, and not hesitating at
the employment of brute force, deportation, assassination. Unfortunately
for the world, the unscrupulous party carried the day.
[Sidenote: They inherit the old Greek medicine.]
By their descent, the Nestorians had become the depositaries of the old
Greek medical science. Its great names they revered. They collected,
with the utmost assiduity, whatever works remained on medical topics,
whether of a Greek or Alexandrian origin, from the writings of
Hippocrates, called, with affectionate veneration by his successors,
"The Divine Old Man," down to those of the Ptolemaic school.
[Sidenote: Origin of Greek medicine--Asclepions.]
[Sidenote: Hippocrates destroys the theological theory of disease.]
Greek medicine arose in the temples of Æsculapius, whither the sick were
in the habit of resorting for the assistance of the god. It does not
appear that any fee was exacted for the celestial advice; but the
gratitude of the patient was frequently displayed by optional gifts, and
votive tablets presented to the temple, setting forth the circumstances
of the case, were of value to those disposed to enter on medical
studies. The Asclepions thus became both hospitals and schools. They
exercised, from their position, a tendency to incorporate medical and
ecclesiastical pursuits. At this time it was universally believed that
every sickness was due to the anger of some offended god, and especially
was this supposed to be the case in epidemics and plagues. Such a
paralyzing notion was necessarily inconsistent with any attempt at the
relief of communities by the exercise of sanitary measures. In our times
it is still difficult to remove from the minds of the illiterate classes
this ancient opinion, or to convince them that under such visitations we
ought to help ourselves, and not expect relief by penance and
supplications, unless we join therewith rigorous personal, domestic,
municipal cleanliness, fresh air, and light. The theological doctrine of
the nature of disease indicated its means of cure. For Hippocrates was
reserved the great glory of destroying them both, replacing them by more
practical and material ideas, and, from the votive tablets, traditions,
and other sources, together with his own admirable observations,
compiling a body of medicine. The necessary consequence of his great
success was the separation of the pursuits of the physician from those
of the priest. Not that so great a revolution, implying the diversion of
profitable gains from the ancient channel, could have been accomplished
without a struggle. We should reverence the memory of Hippocrates for
the complete manner in which he effected that object.
[Sidenote: Writings of Hippocrates.]
Of the works attributed to Hippocrates, many are doubtless the
production of his family, his descendants, or his pupils. The
inducements to literary forgery in the times of the Ptolemies, who paid
very high prices for books of reputation, have been the cause of much
difficulty among critics in determining such questions of authorship.
The works indisputably written by Hippocrates display an extent of
knowledge answering to the authority of his name; his vivid descriptions
have never been excelled, if indeed they have ever been equalled. The
Hippocratic face of the dying is still retained in our medical treatises
in the original terms, without any improvement.
[Sidenote: His opinions.]
In his medical doctrine, Hippocrates starts with the postulate that the
body is composed of the four elements. From these are formed the four
cardinal humours. He thinks that the humours are liable to undergo
change; that health consists in their right constitution and proper
adjustment as to quantity; disease, in their impurities and
inequalities; that the disordered humours undergo spontaneous changes or
coction, a process requiring time, and hence the explanation of critical
days and critical discharges. The primitive disturbance of the humours
he attributed to a great variety of causes, chiefly to the influence of
physical circumstances, such as heat, cold, air, water. Unlike his
contemporaries, he did not impute all the afflictions of man to the
anger of the gods. Along with those influences of an external kind, he
studied the special peculiarities of the human system, how it is
modified by climate and manner of life, exhibiting different
predispositions at different seasons of the year. He believed that the
innate heat of the body varies with the period of life, being greatest
in infancy and least in old age, and that hence morbific agents affect
us with greater or less facility at different times. For this reason it
is that the physician should attend very closely to the condition of
those in whom he is interested as respects their diet and exercise, for
thereby he is able not only to regulate their general susceptibility,
but also to exert a control over the course of their diseases.
Referring diseases in general to the condition or distribution of the
humours, for he regards inflammation as the passing of blood into parts
not previously containing it, he considers that so long as those liquids
occupy the system in an unnatural or adulterated state, disease
continues; but as they ferment or undergo coction, various
characteristic symptoms appear, and, when their elaboration is
completed, they are discharged by perspiration or other secretions, by
alvine dejections, etc. But where such a general relief of the system is
not accomplished, the peccant humours may be localized in some
particular organ or special portion, and erysipelatous inflammation,
mortification, or other such manifestations ensue. It is in aiding this
elimination from the system that the physician may signally manifest his
skill. His power is displayed much more at this epoch than by the
control he can exert over the process of coction. Now may he invoke the
virtues of the hellebores, the white and the black, now may he use
elaterium. The critical days which answer to the periods of the process
of coction are to be watched with anxiety, and the correspondence of the
state of the patient with the expected condition which he ought to show
at those epochs ascertained. Hence the physician may be able to predict
the probable course of the disease during the remainder of its career,
and gather true notions as to the practice it would be best for him to
pursue to aid Nature in her operations.
[Sidenote: The character of his practice.]
It thus appears that the practice of medicine in the hands of
Hippocrates had reference rather to the course or career of disease than
to its special nature. Nothing more than this masterly conception is
wanted to impress us with his surprizing scientific power. He watches
the manner in which the humours are undergoing their fermenting coction,
the phenomena displayed in the critical days, the aspect and nature of
the critical discharges. He does not attempt to check the process going
on, but simply to assist the natural operation.
When we consider the period at which Hippocrates lived, B.C. 400, and
the circumstances under which he had studied medicine, we cannot fail to
admire the very great advance he made. His merit is conspicuous in
rejecting the superstitious tendency of his times by teaching his
disciples to impute a proper agency to physical causes. He altogether
discarded the imaginary influences then in vogue. For the gods he
substituted, with singular felicity, Impersonal Nature. It was the
interest of those who were connected with the temples of Æsculapius to
refer all the diseases of men to supernatural agency; their doctrine
being that every affliction should be attributed to the anger of some
offended god, and restoration to health most certainly procured by
conciliating his power. So far, then, as such interests were concerned,
any contradiction of those doctrines, any substitution of the material
for the supernatural, must needs have met with reprehension. Yet such
opposition seems in no respect to have weighed with this great
physician, who developed his theory and pursued his practice without
giving himself any concern in that respect. He bequeathed an example to
all who succeeded him in his noble profession, and taught them not to
hesitate in encountering the prejudices and passions of the present for
the sake of the truth, and to trust for their reward in the just
appreciation of a future age.
[Sidenote: His doctrine is truly scientific.]
With such remarks we may assert that the medical philosophy of
Hippocrates is worthy of our highest admiration, since it exhibits the
scientific conditions of deduction and induction. The theory itself is
compact and clear; its lineaments are completely Grecian. It presents,
to one who will contemplate it with due allowance for its times, the
characteristic quick-sightedness, penetration, and power of the Greek
mind, fully vindicating for its author the title which has been
conferred upon him by his European successors--the Father of
Medicine--and perhaps inducing us to excuse the enthusiastic assertion
of Galen, that we ought to reverence the words of Hippocrates as the
voice of God.
[Sidenote: The school of Cnidos.]
[Sidenote: Is destroyed by Constantine.]
[Sidenote: Classes of physicians.]
The Hippocratic school of Cos found a rival in the school of Cnidos,
which offered not only a different view of the nature of disease, but
also taught a different principle for its cure. The Cnidians paid more
particular attention to the special symptoms in individual cases, and
pursued a less active treatment, declining, whenever they could, a
resort to drastic purgatives, venesection, or other energetic means. As
might be expected, the professional activity of these schools called
into existence many able men, and produced many excellent works: thus
Philiston wrote on the regimen for persons in health; Diocles on hygiene
and gymnastics; Praxagoras on the pulse, showing that it is a measure of
the force of disease. The Asclepion of Cnidos continued until the time
of Constantine, when it was destroyed along with many other pagan
establishments. The union between the priesthood and the profession was
gradually becoming less and less close; and, as the latter thus
separated itself, divisions or departments arose in it, both as regards
subjects, such as pharmacy, surgery, etc., and also as respects the
position of its cultivators, some pursuing it as a liberal science, and
some as a mere industrial occupation. In those times, as in our own,
many who were not favoured with the gifts of fortune were constrained to
fall into the latter ranks. Thus Aristotle, than whom few have ever
exerted a greater intellectual influence upon humanity, after spending
his patrimony in liberal pursuits, kept an apothecary's shop at Athens.
Aristotle the druggist, behind his counter, selling medicines to chance
customers, is Aristotle the great writer, whose dictum was final with
the schoolmen of the Middle Ages. As a general thing, however, the
medical professors were drawn from the philosophical class. Outside of
these divisions, and though in all ages continually repudiated by the
profession, yet continually hovering round it, was a host of impostors
and quacks, as there will always be so long as there are weak-minded and
shallow men to be deluded, and vain and silly women to believe.
[Sidenote: Egyptian medicine. The Museum.]
[Sidenote: Philadelphus founds medicine on anatomy.]
[Sidenote: He authorizes dissection and human vivisection.]
[Sidenote: Physicians of the Alexandrian school.]
When the Alexandrian Museum was originated by Ptolemy Philadelphus, its
studies were arranged in four faculties--literature, mathematics,
astronomy, medicine. These divisions are, however, to be understood
comprehensively: thus, under the faculty of medicine were included such
subjects as natural history. The physicians who received the first
appointments were Cleombrotus, Herophilus, and Erasistratus; among the
subordinate professors was Philo-Stephanus, who had charge of natural
history, and was directed to write a book on Fishes. The elevated ideas
of the founder cannot be better illustrated than by the manner in which
he organized his medical school. It was upon the sure basis of anatomy.
Herophilus and his colleagues were authorized to resort to the
dissection of the dead, and to ascertain, by that only trustworthy
method, the true structure of the human body. The strong hand of Ptolemy
resolutely carried out his design, though in a country where popular
sentiment was strongly opposed to such practices. To touch a corpse in
Egypt was an abomination. Nor was it only this great man's intention to
ascertain the human structure; he also took measures to discover the
mode in which its functions are carried forward, the manner in which it
works. To this end he authorized his anatomists to make vivisections
both of animals, and also of criminals who had been condemned to death,
herein finding for himself that royal road in physiology which Euclid
once told him, at a dinner in the Museum, did not exist in geometry, and
defending the act from moral criticism by the plea that, as the culprits
had already forfeited their lives to the law, it was no injury to make
them serviceable to the interests of humanity. Herophilus had been
educated at Cos; his pathological views were those known as humouralism;
his treatment active, after the manner of Hippocrates, upon whose works
he wrote commentaries. His original investigations were numerous; they
were embodied, with his peculiar views, in treatises on the practice of
medicine; on obstetrics; on the eye; on the pulse, which he properly
referred to contractions of the heart. He was aware of the existence of
the lacteals, and their anatomical relation to the mesenteric glands.
Erasistratus, his colleague, was a pupil of Theophrastus and Chrysippus:
he, too, cultivated anatomy. He described the structure of the heart,
its connexions with the arteries and veins, but fell into the mistake
that the former vessels were for the conveyance of air, the latter for
that of blood. He knew that there are two kinds of nerves, those of
motion and those of sensation. He referred all fevers to inflammatory
states, and in his practice differed from the received methods of
Hippocrates by observing a less active treatment.
[Sidenote: Improvements in surgery and pharmacy.]
By these physicians the study of medicine in Alexandria was laid upon
the solid foundation of anatomy. Besides them there were many other
instructors in specialties; and, indeed, the temple of Serapis was used
for a hospital, the sick being received into it, and persons studying
medicine admitted for the purpose of familiarizing themselves with the
appearance of disease, precisely as in similar institutions at the
present time. Of course, under such circumstances, the departments of
surgery and pharmacy received many improvements, and produced many able
men. Among these improvements may be mentioned new operations, for
lithotomy, instruments for crushing calculi, for reducing dislocations,
etc. The active commerce of Egypt afforded abundant opportunity for
extending the materia medica by the introduction of a great many herbs
and drugs.
[Sidenote: Decline of Alexandrian medicine.]
The medical school of Alexandria, which was thus originally based upon
dissection, in the course of time lost much of its scientific spirit.
But the influence of the first teachers may be traced through many
subsequent ages. Thus Galen divides the profession in his time into
Herophilians and Erasistratians. Various sects had arisen in the course
of events, as the Dogmatists, who asserted that diseases can only be
treated correctly by the aid of a knowledge of the structure and
functions, the action of drugs, and the changes induced in the affected
parts; they insisted, therefore, upon the necessity of anatomy,
physiology, therapeutics, and pathology. They claimed a descent from
Hippocrates. Their antagonists, the Empirics, ridiculed such knowledge
as fanciful or unattainable, and relied on experience alone. These
subdivisions were not limited to sects; they may also be observed under
the form of schools. Even Erasistratus himself, toward the close of his
life, through some dispute or misunderstanding, appears to have left the
Museum and established a school at Smyrna. The study of the various
branches of medicine was also pursued by others out of the immediate
ranks of the profession. Mithridates, king of Pontus, thus devoted
himself to the examination of poisons and the discovery of antidotes.
What a fall from this scientific medicine to the miracle-cure which soon
displaced it! What a descent from Hippocrates and the great Alexandrian
physicians to the shrines of saints and the monks!
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The Jewish physicians.]
To the foregoing sketch of the state of Greek medicine in its day of
glory, I must add an examination of the same science among the Jews
subsequently to the second century; it is necessary for the proper
understanding of the origin of Saracen learning.
[Sidenote: Their emancipation from the supernatural.]
In philosophy the Jews had been gradually emancipating themselves from
the influence of ancient traditions; their advance in this direction is
shown by the active manner in which they aided in the development of
Neo-platonism. After the destruction of Jerusalem all Syria and
Mesopotamia were full of Jewish schools; but the great philosophers, as
well as the great merchants of the nation, were residents of Alexandria.
Persecution and dispersion, if they served no other good purpose,
weakened the grasp of the ecclesiastic. Perhaps, too, repeated
disappointments in an expected coming of a national temporal Messiah had
brought those who were now advanced in intellectual progress to a just
appreciation of ancient traditions. In this mental emancipation their
physicians took the lead. For long, while their pursuits were yet in
infancy, a bitter animosity had been manifested toward them by the
Levites, whose manner of healing was by prayer, expiatory sacrifice, and
miracle; or, if they descended to less supernatural means, by an
application of such remedies as are popular with the vulgar everywhere.
Thus, to a person bitten by a mad dog, they would give the diaphragm of
a dog to eat. As examples of a class of men soon to take no obscure
share in directing human progress may be mentioned Hannina, A.D. 205,
often spoken of by his successors as the earliest of Jewish physicians;
Samuel, equally distinguished as an astronomer, accoucheur, and oculist,
the inventor of a collyrium which bore his name; Rab, an anatomist, who
wrote a treatise on the structure of the body of man as ascertained by
dissections, thereby attaining such celebrity that the people, after his
death, used the earth of his grave as a medicine; Abba Oumna, whose
study of insanity plainly shows that he gave a material interpretation
to the national doctrine of possession by devils, and replaced that
strange delusion by the scientific explanation of corporeal derangement.
This honourable physician made it a rule never to take a fee from the
poor, and never to make any difference in his assiduous attention
between them and the rich. These men may be taken as a type of their
successors to the seventh century, when the Oriental schools were broken
up in consequence of the Arab military movements. In the Talmudic
literature there are all the indications of a transitional state, so far
as medicine is concerned; the supernatural seems to be passing into the
physical, the ecclesiastical is mixed up with the exact: thus a rabbi
may cure disease by the ecclesiastical operation of laying on of hands;
but of febrile disturbances, an exact, though erroneous explanation is
given, and paralysis of the hind legs of an animal is correctly referred
to the pressure of a tumour on the spinal cord. Some of its aphorisms
are not devoid of amusing significance: "Any disease, provided the
bowels remain open; any kind of pain, provided the heart remain
unaffected; any kind of uneasiness, provided the head be not attacked;
all manner of evils, except it be a bad woman."
[Sidenote: The Arabs affiliate with them.]
[Sidenote: Rise of Jewish physicians to influence.]
[Sidenote: They found medical colleges,]
[Sidenote: and promote science and literature.]
At first, after the fall of the Alexandrian school, it was all that the
Jewish physicians could do to preserve the learning that had descended
to them. But when the tumult of Arabic conquest was over, we find them
becoming the advisers of crowned heads, and exerting, by reason of their
advantageous position, their liberal education, their enlarged views, a
most important influence on the intellectual progress of humanity. Maser
Djaivah, physician to the Khalif Moawiyah, was distinguished at once as
a poet, a critic, a philosopher; Haroun, a physician of Alexandria,
whose Pandects, a treatise unfortunately now lost, are said to have
contained the first elaborate description of the small-pox and method of
its treatment. Isaac Ben Emran wrote an original treatise on poisons
and their symptoms, and others followed his example. The Khalif Al
Raschid, who maintained political relations with Charlemagne by means of
Jewish envoys, set that monarch an example by which indeed he was not
slow to profit, in actively patronising the medical college at
Djondesabour, and founding a university at Bagdad. He prohibited any
person from practising medicine until after a satisfactory examination
before one of those faculties. In the East the theological theory of
disease and of its cure was fast passing away. Of the school at Bagdad,
Joshua ben Nun is said to have been the most celebrated professor, the
school itself actively promoting the translation of Greek works into
Arabic--not alone works of a professional, but also those of a general
kind. In this manner the writings of Plato and Aristotle were secured;
indeed, it is said that almost every day camels laden with volumes were
entering the gates of Bagdad. To add to the supply, the Emperor Michael
III. was compelled by treaty to furnish Greek books. The result of this
intellectual movement could be no other than a diffusion of light.
Schools arose in Bassora, Ispahan, Samarcand, Fez, Morocco, Sicily,
Cordova, Seville, Granada.
[Sidenote: Intermingling of magic and sorcery.]
[Sidenote: Dedication of portions of matter and time to the
supernatural.]
[Sidenote: Origin of the week.]
Through the Nestorians and the Jews the Arabs thus became acquainted
with the medical science of Greece and Alexandria; but to this was added
other knowledge of a more sinister kind, derived from Persia, or perhaps
remotely from Chaldee sources, the Nestorians having important Church
establishments in Mesopotamia, and the Jews having been long familiar
with that country; indeed, from thence their ancestors originally came.
More than once its ideas had modified their national religion. This
extraneous knowledge was of an astrological or magical nature, carried
into practice by incantations, amulets, charms, and talismans. Its
fundamental principle was that the planetary bodies exercise an
influence over terrestrial things. As seven planets and seven metals
were at that time known--the sun, the moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter,
Venus, Saturn, being the planets of astrology--a due allotment was made.
Gold was held sacred to the sun, silver to the moon, iron to Mars, etc.
Even the portions of time were in like manner dedicated; the seven days
of the week were respectively given to the seven planets of astrology.
The names imposed on those days, and the order in which they occur, are
obviously connected with the Ptolemaic hypothesis of astronomy, each of
the planets having an hour assigned to it in its order of occurrence,
and the planet ruling first the hour of each day giving its name to that
day. Thus arranged, the week is a remarkable instance of the longevity
of an institution adapted to the wants of man. It has survived through
many changes of empire, has forced itself on the ecclesiastical system
of Europe, which, unable to change its idolatrous aspect, has encouraged
the vulgar error that it owes its authenticity to the Holy Scriptures,
an error too plainly betrayed by the pagan names that the days bear, and
also by their order of occurrence.
These notions of dedicating portions of matter or of time to the
supernatural were derived from the doctrine of a universal spirit or
soul of the world, extensively believed in throughout the East. It
underlies, as we have seen in Chapter III., all Oriental theology, and
is at once a very antique and not unphilosophical conception. Of this
soul the spirit of man was by many supposed to be a particle like a
spark given off from a flame. All other things, animate or inanimate,
brutes, plants, stones, nay, even natural forms, rivers, mountains,
cascades, grottoes, have each an indwelling and animating spirit.
[Sidenote: Alexandrian necromancy.]
Amulets and charms, therefore, did not derive their powers from the
material substance of which they consisted, but from this indwelling
spirit. In the case of man, his immaterial principle was believed to
correspond to his personal bodily form. Of the two great sects into
which the Jewish nation had been divided, the Pharisees accepted the
Assyrian doctrine; but the Sadducees, who denied the existence of any
such spirit, boasted that theirs was the old Mosaic faith, and denounced
their antagonists as having been contaminated at the time of the
Babylonian captivity, before which catastrophe, according to them, these
doctrines were unheard of in Jerusalem. In Alexandria, among the
leading men there were many adherents to these opinions. Thus Plotinus
wrote a book on the association of dæmons with men, and his disciple
Porphyry proved practically the possibility of such an alliance; for,
repairing to the temple of Isis along with Plotinus and a certain
Egyptian priest, the latter, to prove his supernatural power, offered to
raise up the spirit of Plotinus himself in a visible form. A magical
circle was drawn on the ground, surrounded with the customary
astrological signs, the invocation commenced, the spirit appeared, and
Plotinus stood face to face with his own soul. In this successful
experiment it is needless to inquire how much the necromancer depended
upon optical contrivances, and how much upon an alarmed imagination. But
if thus the spirit of a living man could be called up, how much more
likely the souls of the dead.
[Sidenote: These ideas originate in Pantheism.]
In reality, these wild doctrines were connected with Pantheism, which
was secretly believed in everywhere; for, though, in a coarse mode of
expression, a distinction seemed thus to be made between matter and
spirit, or body and soul, it was held by the initiated that matter
itself is a mere shadow of the spirit, and the body a delusive semblance
of the soul.
[Sidenote: The black art.]
In the eighth century, many natural facts of a surprising and
unaccountable description, well calculated to make a profound impression
upon those who witnessed them, had accumulated. They were such as are
now familiar to chemists. Vessels tightly closed were burst open when
tormented in the fire, apparently by some invisible agency; intangible
vapours condensed into solids; from colourless liquids gaudy
precipitates were suddenly called into existence; flames were disengaged
without any adequate cause; explosions took place spontaneously. So much
that was unexpected and unaccountable justified the title of "the occult
science," "the black art." From being isolated marvels unconnected with
one another, these facts had been united. The Chaldee notions of a soul
of the world, and of indwelling spirits, had furnished a thread on which
all these pearls, for such they proved to be, might be strung.
[Sidenote: The Arabians fall into these delusions,]
With avidity--for there is ever a charm in the supernatural--did the
Arabs receive from their Nestorian and Jewish medical instructors these
mystical interpretations along with true knowledge. And far from resting
satisfied with what their masters had thus delivered, they proceeded
forthwith to improve and extend it for themselves. They submitted all
kinds of substances to all kinds of operations, greatly improving the
experimental process they had been taught. By exposing various bodies to
the fire, they found it possible to extract from them more refined
portions, which seemed to concentrate in themselves the qualities
pertaining in a more diffuse way to the substances from which they had
been drawn. These, since they were often invisible at their first
disengagement, yet capable of bursting open the strongest vessels, and
sometimes of disappearing in explosions and flames, they concluded must
be the indwelling spirit or soul of the body, from which the fire had
driven them forth. It was the Chaldee doctrine realized. Thus they
obtained the spirit of wine, the spirit of salt, the spirit of nitre. We
still retain in commerce these designations, though their significance
is lost. When first introduced they had a strictly literal meaning.
Alchemy, with its essences, quintessences, and spirits, was Pantheism
materialized. God was seen to be in everything, in the abstract as well
as the concrete, in numbers as well as realities.
[Sidenote: and the Christians also.]
Anticipating what will have hereafter to be considered in detail, I may
here remark that it was not the Mohammedan alone who delivered himself
up to these mystic delusions; Christendom was prepared for them also. In
its opinion, the earth, the air, the sea, were full of invisible forms.
With more faith than even by paganism itself was the supernatural power
of the images of the gods accepted, only it was imputed to the influence
of devils. The lunatic was troubled by a like possession. If a spring
discharged its waters with a periodical gushing of carbonic acid gas, it
was agitated by an angel; if an unfortunate descended into a pit and was
suffocated by the mephitic air, it was by some dæmon who was secreted;
if the miner's torch produced an explosion, it was owing to the wrath of
some malignant spirit guarding a treasure, and whose solitude had been
disturbed. There was no end to the stories, duly authenticated by the
best human testimony, of the occasional appearance of such spirits under
visible forms; there was no grotto or cool thicket in which angels and
genii had not been seen, no cavern without its dæmons. Though the names
were not yet given, it was well understood that the air had its sylphs,
the earth its gnomes, the fire its salamanders, the water its undines;
to the day belonged its apparitions, to the night its fairies. The foul
air of stagnant places assumed the visible form of dæmons of abominable
aspect; the explosive gases of mines took on the shape of pale-faced,
malicious dwarfs, with leathery ears hanging down to their shoulders,
and garments of grey cloth. Philosophical conceptions can never be
disentangled from social ideas; the thoughts of man will always gather a
tincture from the intellectual medium in which he lives.
In Christendom, however, the chief application of these doctrines was to
the relics of martyrs and saints. As with the amulets and talismans of
Mesopotamia, these were regarded as possessing supernatural powers. They
were a sure safeguard against evil spirits, and an unfailing relief in
sickness.
[Sidenote: Transmutation of metals--Alchemy.]
[Sidenote: Philosopher's stone.]
A singular force was given to these mystic ideas by the peculiar
direction they happened to take. As there are veins of water in the
earth, and apertures through which the air can gain access, an analogy
was inferred between its structure and that of an animal, leading to an
inference of a similarity of functions. From this came the theory of the
development of metals in its womb under the influence of the planets,
the pregnant earth spontaneously producing gold and silver from baser
things after a definite number of lunations. Already, however, in the
doctrine of the transmutation of metals, it was perceived that to Nature
the lapse of time is nothing--to man it is everything. To Nature, when
she is transmuting a worthless into a better metal, what signify a
thousand years? To man, half a century embraces the period of his
intellectual activity. The aim of the cultivator of the sacred art
should be to shorten the natural term; and, since we observe the
influence of heat in hastening the ripening of fruits, may we not
reasonably expect that duly regulated degrees of fire will answer the
purpose? by an exposure of base material in the furnace for a proper
season, may we not anticipate the wished for event? The Emperor
Caligula, who had formerly tried to make gold from orpiment by the force
of fire, was only one of a thousand adepts pursuing a similar scheme.
Some trusted to the addition of a material substance in aiding the fire
to purge away the dross of the base body submitted to it. From this
arose the doctrine of the powder of projection and the philosopher's
stone.
[Sidenote: Transmutation and transubstantiation.]
This doctrine of the possibility of transmuting things into forms
essentially different steadily made its way, leading, in the material
direction, to alchemy, the art of making gold and silver out of baser
metals, and in theology to transubstantiation. Transmutation and
transubstantiation were twin sisters, destined for a world-wide
celebrity; one became allied to the science of Mecca, the other to the
theology of Rome.
[Sidenote: The elixir of life.]
[Sidenote: Potable gold.]
[Sidenote: Chemical waters.]
While thus the Arabs joined in the pursuit of alchemy, their medical
tendencies led them simultaneously to cultivate another ancient
delusion, the discovery of a universal panacea or elixir which could
cure all diseases and prolong life for ever. Mystical experimenters for
centuries had been ransacking all nature, from the yellow flowers which
are sacred to the sun, and gold his emblem and representative on earth,
down to the vilest excrements of the human body. As to gold, there had
been gathered round that metal many fictitious excellences in addition
to its real values; it was believed that in some preparation of it would
be found the elixir vitæ. This is the explanation of the unwearied
attempts at making potable gold, for it was universally thought that if
that metal could be obtained in a dissolved state, it would constitute
the long-sought panacea. Nor did it seem impossible so to increase the
power of water, as to impart to it new virtues, and thereby enable it to
accomplish the desired solution. Were there not natural waters of very
different properties? were there not some that could fortify the memory,
others destroy it; some re-enforce the spirits, some impart dulness,
and some, which were highly prized, that could secure a return of love?
It had been long known that both natural and artificial waters can
permanently affect the health, and that instruments may be made to
ascertain their qualities. Zosimus, the Panopolitan, had described in
former times the operation of distillation, by which water may be
purified; the Arabs called the apparatus for conducting that experiment
an alembic. His treatise on the virtues and composition of waters was
conveyed under the form of a dream, in which there flit before us
fantastically white-haired priests sacrificing before the altar;
cauldrons of boiling water, in which there are walking about men a span
long; brazen-clad warriors in silence reading leaden books, and sphinxes
with wings. In such incomprehensible fictions knowledge was purposely,
and ignorance conveniently concealed.
[Sidenote: The Arabs originate scientific chemistry.]
The practical Arabs had not long been engaged in these fascinating but
wild pursuits, when results of very great importance began to appear. In
a scientific point of view, the discovery of the strong acids laid the
true foundation of chemistry; in a political point of view, the
invention of gunpowder revolutionized the world.
[Sidenote: Gunpowder and fireworks.]
There were several explosive mixtures. Automatic fire was made from
equal parts of sulphur, saltpetre, and sulphide of antimony, finely
pulverized and mixed into a paste, with equal parts of juice of the
black sycamore and liquid asphaltum, a little quick-lime being added. It
was directed to keep the material from the rays of the sun, which would
set it on fire.
[Sidenote: Incombustible men.]
Of liquid or Greek fire we have not a precise description, since the
knowledge of it was kept at Constantinople as a state secret. There is
reason, however, to believe that it contained sulphur and nitrate of
potash mixed with naphtha. Of gunpowder, Marcus Græcus, whose date is
probably to be referred to the close of the eighth century, gives the
composition explicitly. He directs us to pulverize in a marble mortar
one pound of sulphur, two of charcoal, and six of saltpetre. If some of
this powder be tightly rammed in a long narrow tube closed at one end,
and then set on fire, the tube will fly through the air: this is
clearly the rocket. He says that thunder may be imitated by folding some
of the powder in a cover and tying it up tightly: this is the cracker.
It thus appears that fireworks preceded fire-arms. To the same author we
are indebted for prescriptions for making the skin incombustible, so
that we may handle fire without being burnt. These, doubtless, were
received as explanations of the legends of the times, which related how
miracle-workers had washed their hands in melted copper, and sat at
their ease in flaming straw.
[Sidenote: Arabian chemists.]
Among the Saracen names that might be mentioned as cultivators of
alchemy, we may recall El-Rasi, Ebid Durr, Djafar or Geber, Toghragé,
who wrote an alchemical poem, and Dschildegi, one of whose works bears
the significant title of "The Lantern." The definition of alchemy by
some of these authors is very striking: the science of the balance, the
science of weight, the science of combustion.
[Sidenote: Djafar discovers nitric acid and aqua regia,]
[Sidenote: and that oxidation increases weight.]
[Sidenote: He solves the problem of potable gold.]
To one of these chemists, Djafar, our attention may for a moment be
drawn. He lived toward the end of the eighth century, and is honoured by
Rhazes, Avicenna, and Kalid, the great Arabic physicians, as their
master. His name is memorable in chemistry, since it marks an epoch in
that science of equal importance to that of Priestley and Lavoisier. He
is the first to describe nitric acid and aqua regia. Before him no
stronger acid was known than concentrated vinegar. We cannot conceive of
chemistry as not possessing acids. Roger Bacon speaks of him as the
magister magistrorum. He has perfectly just notions of the nature of
spirits or gases, as we call them; thus he says, "O son of the doctrine,
when spirits fix themselves in bodies, they lose their form; in their
nature they are no longer what they were. When you compel them to be
disengaged again, this is what happens: either the spirit alone escapes
with the air, and the body remains fixed in the alembic, or the spirit
and body escape together at the same time." His doctrine respecting the
nature of the metals, though erroneous, was not without a scientific
value. A metal he considers to be a compound of sulphur, mercury, and
arsenic, and hence he infers that transmutation is possible by varying
the proportion of those ingredients. He knows that a metal, when
calcined, increases in weight, a discovery of the greatest importance,
as eventually brought to bear in the destruction of the doctrine of
Phlogiston of Stahl, and which has been imputed to Europeans of a much
later time. He describes the operations of distillation, sublimation,
filtration, various chemical apparatus, water-baths, sand-baths, cupels
of bone-earth, of the use of which he gives a singularly clear
description. A chemist reads with interest Djafar's antique method of
obtaining nitric acid by distilling in a retort Cyprus vitriol, alum,
and saltpetre. He sets forth its corrosive power, and shows how it may
be made to dissolve even gold itself, by adding a portion of sal
ammoniac. Djafar may thus be considered as having solved the grand
alchemical problem of obtaining gold in a potable state. Of course, many
trials must have been made on the influence of this solution on the
animal system, respecting which such extravagant anticipations had been
entertained. The disappointment that ensued was doubtless the reason
that the records of these trials have not descended to us.
[Sidenote: Rhazes discovers sulphuric acid.]
[Sidenote: Bechil discovers phosphorus.]
With Djafar may be mentioned Rhazes, born A.D. 860, physician-in-chief
to the great hospital at Bagdad. To him is due the first description of
the preparation and properties of sulphuric acid. He obtained it, as the
Nordhausen variety is still made, by the distillation of dried green
vitriol. To him are also due the first indications of the preparation of
absolute alcohol, by distilling spirit of wine from quick-lime. As a
curious discovery made by the Saracens may be mentioned the experiment
of Achild Bechil, who, by distilling together the extract of urine,
clay, lime, and powdered charcoal, obtained an artificial carbuncle,
which shone in the dark "like a good moon." This was phosphorus.
[Sidenote: Geological views of Avicenna.]
[Sidenote: His works indicate the attainment of the times.]
And now there arose among Arabian physicians a correctness of thought
and breadth of view altogether surprising. It might almost be supposed
that the following lines were written by one of our own contemporaries;
they are, however, extracted from a chapter of Avicenna on the origin of
mountains. This author was born in the tenth century. "Mountains may be
due to two different causes. Either they are effects of upheavals of the
crust of the earth, such as might occur during a violent earthquake, or
they are the effect of water, which, cutting for itself a new route, has
denuded the valleys, the strata being of different kinds, some soft,
some hard. The winds and waters disintegrate the one, but leave the
other intact. Most of the eminences of the earth have had this latter
origin. It would require a long period of time for all such changes to
be accomplished, during which the mountains themselves might be somewhat
diminished in size. But that water has been the main cause of these
effects is proved by the existence of fossil remains of aquatic and
other animals on many mountains." Avicenna also explains the nature of
petrifying or incrusting waters, and mentions ærolites, out of one of
which a sword-blade was made, but he adds that the metal was too brittle
to be of any use. A mere catalogue of some of the works of Avicenna will
indicate the condition of Arabian attainment. 1. On the Utility and
Advantage of Science; 2. Of Health and Remedies; 3. Canons of Physic; 4.
On Astronomical Observations; 5. Mathematical Theorems; 6. On the Arabic
Language and its Properties; 7. On the Origin of the Soul and
Resurrection of the Body; 8. Demonstration of Collateral Lines on the
Sphere; 9. An Abridgment of Euclid; 10. On Finity and Infinity; 11. On
Physics and Metaphysics; 12. An Encyclopædia of Human Knowledge, in 20
vols., etc., etc. The perusal of such a catalogue is sufficient to
excite profound attention when we remember the contemporaneous state of
Europe.
[Sidenote: Effect of the search for the elixir on practical medicine.]
The pursuit of the elixir made a well-marked impression upon Arab
experimental science, confirming it in its medical application. At the
foundation of this application lay the principle that it is possible to
relieve the diseases of the human body by purely material means. As the
science advanced it gradually shook off its fetichisms, the spiritual
receding into insignificance, the material coming into bolder relief.
Not, however, without great difficulty was a way forced for the great
doctrine that the influence of substances on the constitution of man is
altogether of a material kind, and not at all due to any indwelling or
animating spirit; that it is of no kind of use to practise incantations
over drugs, or to repeat prayers over the mortar in which medicines are
being compounded, since the effect will be the same, whether this has
been done or not; that there is no kind of efficacy in amulets, no
virtue in charms; and that, though saint-relics may serve to excite the
imagination of the ignorant, they are altogether beneath the attention
of the philosopher.
[Sidenote: Medical conflict between Europe and Africa.]
It was this last sentiment which brought Europe and Africa into
intellectual collision. The Saracen and Hebrew physicians had become
thoroughly materialized. Throughout Christendom the practice of medicine
was altogether supernatural. It was in the hands of ecclesiastics; and
saint relics, shrines, and miracle-cures were a source of boundless
profit. On a subsequent page I shall have to describe the circumstances
of the conflict that ensued between material philosophy on one side, and
supernatural jugglery on the other; to show how the Arab system gained
the victory, and how, out of that victory, the industrial life of Europe
arose. The Byzantine policy inaugurated in Constantinople and Alexandria
was, happily for the world, in the end overthrown. To that future page I
must postpone the great achievements of the Arabians in the fulness of
their Age of Reason. When Europe was hardly more enlightened than
Caffraria is now, the Saracens were cultivating and even creating
science. Their triumphs in philosophy, mathematics, astronomy,
chemistry, medicine, proved to be more glorious, more durable, and
therefore more important than their military actions had been.