of the Ebers Papyrus" in some detail in the _Journal of the American
Medical Association_ about five years ago, over 700 different
substances are mentioned as of remedial value in this old-time medical
work. There is scarcely a disease of any important organ with which we
are familiar in the modern {47} time that is not mentioned here. While
the significance of diseases of such organs as the spleen, the
ductless glands, and the appendix was of course missed, nearly every
other pathological condition was either expressly named or at least
hinted at. The papyrus insists very much on the value of
history-taking in medicine, and hints that the reason why physicians
fail to cure is often because they have not studied their cases
sufficiently. While the treatment was mainly symptomatic, it was not
more so than is a great deal of therapeutics at the present time, even
in the regular school of medicine. The number and variety of their
remedies and of their modes of administering them is so marvellous,
that I prefer to quote Dr. von Klein's enumeration of them for you:
"In this papyrus are mentioned over 700 different substances from
the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms which act as stimulants,
sedatives, motor excitants, motor depressants, narcotics, hypnotics,
analgesics, anodynes, antispasmodics, mydriatics, myotics,
expectorants, tonics, dentifrices, sialogogues, antisialics,
refrigerants, emetics, antiemetics, carminatives, cathartics,
purgatives, astringents, cholagogues, anthelmintics, restoratives,
haematics, alteratives, antipyretics, antiphlogistics,
antiperiodics, diuretics, diluents, diaphoretics, sudorifics,
anhydrotics, emmenagogues, oxytocics, ecbolics, galactagogues,
irritants, escharotics, caustics, styptics, haemostatics,
emollients, demulcents, protectives, antizymotics, {48}
disinfectants, deodorants, parasiticides, antidotes and
antagonists."
Scarcely less interesting than the variety of remedies were their
methods of administration:
"Medicines are directed to be administered internally in the form of
decoctions, infusions, injections, pills, tablets, troches, capsules,
powders, potions and inhalations; and externally, as lotions,
ointments, plasters, etc. They are to be eaten, drunk, masticated or
swallowed, to be taken often once only--often for many days--and the
time is occasionally designated--to be taken mornings, evenings or at
bedtime. Formulas to disguise bad tasting medicaments are also given."
We have no advantages over the early Egyptians even in elegant
prescribing.
The traditions with regard to Egyptian medicine which came to the
Greeks seemed so incredible as we found them in the older historians
that they used to be joked about. Herodotus came in for a good deal of
this scoffing. He was said to be entirely too credulous and prone to
exaggerate in order to add interest to his history, but every advance
in our knowledge in modern time has confirmed what Herodotus has to
say. In the eighteenth century Voltaire said of him, "The Father of
history, nay, rather the Father of lies." That was Voltaire's way.
Anything that was above him he scoffed at. Homer was a wandering
minstrel such as you might find in the streets of Paris, Dante was a
mediaeval barbarian, {49} our own Shakespeare was a dramatic butcher,
producing his effects by bloodshed and cruelty upon the stage. The
nineteenth century has reversed Voltaire in every point of this,
though some still listen to him in other matters. Above all, Herodotus
has been amply justified by modern investigations. Herodotus tells us
of the tradition of the number of different kinds of medical
specialists in existence among the Egyptians. We are very prone to
think that specialism is a development of modern medicine. What we
know of Egypt shows us how old it is and makes it very clear that
there must have been specialized modes of medical education for these
many doctors who treated only very limited portions of the body and no
other.
Herodotus tells us, to quote for you the quaint English of one of the
old translations:
"Physicke is so studied and practised with the Egyptians that every
disease hath his several physician, who striveth to excell in
healing that one disease and not to be expert in curing many.
Whereof it cometh that every corner of that country is full of
physicians. Some for the eyes, others for the head, many for the
teeth, not a few for the stomach and the inwards."
The Ebers Papyrus shows us that the specialties were by no means
scantily developed. We have traditions of operations upon the nose, of
remedies for the eyes there are many and the diagnosis and treatment
of eye diseases are rather well {50} developed. The filling of teeth
seems even to have been practised, [Footnote 5] and while the
traditions in this matter are a little dubious, the evidence has been
accepted by some good authorities. This specialism in Egyptian
medicine probably existed long before Herodotus, for he seems to speak
of it as a very old-time institution in his time, and indeed Egypt had
degenerated so much that it would be hard to believe that there was
any such development there in his time. In the old temples they seem
to have used many modes of treatment that we are likely to think of as
very modern. Music for instance was used to soothe the worried,
amusements of various kinds were employed to influence the disturbed
mind favorably. In many ways some of the old temples resembled our
modern health resorts. To them many patients flocked and were treated
and talked about their ailments and went back each year for "the cure"
once more, all the while being more benefited, as is true also in our
own time, by the regularity of life, the regulation of diet and the
mental influence of the place, than by any of the drugs or even the
curative waters.
[Footnote 5: Burdett: "History of Hospitals."]
In a word, our study of old Egypt and Egyptian education shows us men
doing things just about the way that our generation does them and
succeeding just about as well as we succeed. They taught writing,
spelling and composition as we do and the moral content of their
teaching is admirable. They had training schools for the arts {51} and
crafts, their taste is better than ours in many things, above all,
they trained workmen very well, and the remains of their achievements
are still the subject of our admiration. They solved mechanical
problems in the building of the pyramids quite as well as we do. They
made enough experiments that we would call chemical, to find enduring
pigments for decorative purposes and they succeeded in making tools
that enabled them to carve stonework beautifully. Even their
professional education was not very different from our own and its
results, particularly in the line of specialism, are startling
anticipations of the most modern phase of medicine. They anticipated
our interests in psychotherapy and some of them were mental healers,
and more of them used the influence of the mind on the body than our
physicians have been accustomed to until very recent years. Their
physicians and surgeons were held in the highest veneration, and what
we know of them shows that the judgment of the old Egyptians in this
matter was very good and better than the average appreciation of
physicians at the present time.
After all is said no one with any pretence to knowledge of the past
would claim for a moment that we were doing better work in anything
than men have done at many times in the history of culture. Our idea
of progress is just one of these vague bits of self-sufficiency that
each generation has had in its own time and that has made it feel {52}
that somehow what it is accomplishing means much in the world's
history. It is rather amusing to compare the estimate that any
generation has of itself with the appreciation of it by succeeding
generations. Especially is this true for generations separated by 100
years or more. Generations are only made up of men and women, and what
man or woman is there who has not thought many times during life that
though his or her work might not be estimated very highly by those
close to it, this was due but to a sad lack of proper appreciation,
since it represented certain qualities that well deserved admiration?
We are all gifted with this precious self-conceit, which is not so bad
a thing, after all, since it makes us work better than if we had a
proper but much less exalted appreciation of our real worth. It is
much easier to encourage people to do things than to scold or
criticise them into doing them. We shall not quarrel with our
generation, then, for being self-conceited,--it is made up of human
beings,--but we shall try and not let a due appreciation of our
accomplishment be smothered entirely, by this self-conceit.
After all, did not our favorite English poet of the late nineteenth
century declare us to be "the heirs of all the ages in the foremost
files of time," and how could it be otherwise than that we should be
far ahead of the past, not only because the evolution of man made him
more capable of handling difficult problems, but also because we {53}
had the advantage of the accumulated wisdom such as it was of the
past, of the observations and the conclusions of our forefathers and,
of course, we were far ahead of them. This idea, however, so widely
diffused that it might almost be spoken of as universal, has received
many jolts in recent times, since we have come to try to develop the
taste and the intellect of our people and not merely our material
comforts and our satisfaction with ourselves. It has been pointed out,
over and over again, in recent years that, of course, there is no such
thing as progress in literature, that in art we are far behind many
generations of the past, that in architecture there is not a new idea
in the world since the sixteenth century, that in all these modes of
human expression we are mere imitators and not originators. Our drama
is literally and literarily a farce, and no drama that any one expects
to live has been written for more than a century. Our buildings are
replicas of old-time structures, no matter what their purpose, whether
it be ecclesiastical, or educational, or municipal, or beneficiary.
Of course from the scientific standpoint this is, after all, what we
might expect. In all the years of history of which we have any record
there has been no change in the nature of man and no modification of
his being that would lead us to expect from him anything different
from what had been accomplished by man in the past. There is no change
in man's structure, in the size of his {54} body in any way, in his
anatomy or his physiology, in his customs, or ways of life, or in his
health. The healthy still have about the same expectation of life, to
use the life insurance term, and though we have increased the general
average duration of life this has been at the expense of other
precious qualities of the race. The healthy live longer, but the
unhealthy also live longer. The weaklings in mind and body whom nature
used to eliminate early are now a burden that must be cared for. In
general it may be said, and Virchow, the great German pathologist, who
was one of the world's great living anthropologists of his time--and
that but a few years ago--used to insist, that man's skeleton and,
above all, his skull as we can study them in the mummy of the olden
time, were exactly the same as those that the race has now. Man cannot
by thinking add a cubit to his stature, nor an inch to the
circumference of his skull. The seventh generation of an academic
family each member of which has been at the university in his time, is
not any more likely to have special faculties for the intellectual
life, indeed it is sometimes hinted that he has less of a chance than
if his parents had been peasants for as long as the history of the
family can be traced. Of course this has no proper bearing on
evolution from the biological standpoint, for the length of time that
we have in human history may be conceded to be entirely inadequate to
produce any noticeable changes on man's body or mind, {55} granting
that such were in progress. At the most we have 7,000 years of history
and the evolutionists would tell us that this is as nothing in the
unnumbered aeons of evolution. In the popular estimation, however,
evolution can almost be seen at work just as if one could see blades
of grass growing by watching them closely enough. This impression of
man's progress supposed to be supported by the theory of evolution is
entirely unfounded. Just as his body is the same and his brain the
same size, and the relative proportion of brain weight to body weight
or at least to skull capacity the same now as they were 6,000 years
ago; and this is true for both sexes, so that because women have
smaller bodies by one-eighth they also have smaller skulls, and this,
too, occurs among the mummies in Egypt quite as in our own time; so in
what he is able to do with body and mind man is unchanged. Something
of dexterity, of facility, of self-confidence and assurance of results
is gained from time to time in history, but lost as often, because a
few generations fail to be interested in what interested their
immediate predecessors immensely.
It is not surprising, then, that history should show us at all times
men doing work about like that which they did at any other
time--provided they were deeply interested enough. The wisdom of the
oldest book in the world, a father's advice to his son, is as
practical in most ways as Gorgon Graham's letters to his boy--and ever
so much {56} more ethical and true to life. The decorations of the old
Egyptian tombs, the architecture of their temples, their ways and
habits of life so far as we know them, all proclaim them men and women
just like ourselves, certainly not separated from us by any gulf or
even streamlet of evolution. What are more interesting than any
supposed progress in mankind, are the curious ups and downs of
interest in particular subjects which follow one another with almost
definite regularity in history as we know it. Men become occupied with
some phase of the expression of life, literature, architecture,
government, sometimes in two or three of these at the same time, and
then there comes a wonderful period of development. Just when this
epoch reaches an acme of power of expression there come a
self-consciousness and a refinement, welcomed at first as new
progress, but that seem to hamper originality. Then follows a period
of distinct decadence, but with a development of criticism of what was
done in the past, with the formulation of certain principles of
criticism. Just when by this conscious reflection it might be expected
that man would surely advance rapidly, further decay takes place and
there is a negative phase of power of expression, out of which man is
lifted by a new generation usually neglectful of the immediate past,
sometimes indeed deprecating it bitterly, though this new phase may
have been awakened by a further past, which gets back to nature and to
expression for itself.
{57}
The most interesting feature of history is how men have done things,
wonderful things that subsequent generations are sure to admire and
continue to admire whenever they have sense and training enough, yet
forget about them. This is true not only for artistic productions but
also for practical applications in science, for inventions, useful
discoveries and the like. In surgery, for instance, though we have a
continuous history of medicine, all of our instruments have been
re-invented at least three or four times. After the reinvention we
have been surprised to discover that previous generations had used
these instruments long before us. Even the Suez Canal was undoubtedly
open at least once before our time. Personally I feel sure that
America was discovered at least twice before Columbus' time and that
during several centuries there was considerable intercourse between
Europe and America. It is extremely important for us then to realize
these cycles in human progress and not to deceive ourselves with the
idea that because we are doing something that immediately preceding
generations knew nothing of, therefore we are doing something that
never was done in the world before. This is particularly important for
us now, for in my estimation the eighteenth was one of the lowest of
centuries in human accomplishment, and therefore we may easily deceive
ourselves as to our place in human history in this century.
{58}
Reflections of this kind are, it seems to me, particularly important
for educators, especially in the midst of our tendency to accept
evolution unthinkingly in this generation. Man's skull has not
changed, his body has not been modified, his soft tissues are the same
as they used to be. His brain is no different. Why, then, should he
not have done things in the olden time just about as he does them now?
We do not think that acquired characters are inherited. Oliver Wendell
Holmes talks of Emerson as the seventh generation of an academic
family, but there are none of us who think that this made it any
easier for Emerson to acquire an education, or gave him a better
development of mind. Those of us who have experience in education know
that the descendant of a family of peasants for centuries or of
farmers for many generations, easily outstrips some of the scions of
academic families in intellect. It is the man that counts and not his
descent.
Just this is true of generations as well as of individuals. Whenever
men have set themselves to doing things they have accomplished about
as good results at any time in history as at any other. We apparently
do not benefit by the accumulation of the experience of our
predecessors. At least we can find no trace of that in history. For a
certain number of enterprising generations there is manifest upward
progress. Then something always happens to disturb the succession of
ideas, sometimes it is nothing more than {59} an over-refinement that
leads to bad taste, and decadence takes the place of progress. The
accomplishment of any particular generation, then, depends not on its
place in any real or fancied scheme of evolution, but on its own
ideals and its determined efforts to achieve them.
There are people who insist that this doctrine is pessimistic and
discouraging and that, if we do not keep before men the consoling
feeling that they are advancing beyond their forebears, there is not
the same incentive to work as there would be under other
circumstances. On the contrary, as it seems to me, this other idea
that everything depends on ourselves and not on our predecessors,
constitutes the highest form of incentive. We at the present time are
far below many preceding generations in art, literature, architecture,
arts and crafts and many developments of taste. Here is no evolution,
but the story of how each generation sets itself to work. Why, then,
should we think that in education, one of the highest of the arts, the
moulding of the human mind into beautiful shapes instead of the
moulding of more plastic material, we should be far ahead of the past
and, therefore, in a position to find no precious lessons in it? The
history of education not alone of the last three centuries of
education, but of at least 6,000 years of education, is worth while
knowing and it magnificently exemplifies how old is the new in
education.
{60}
{61}
THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY
{62}
"What is it that hath been? The same thing that shall be. What is it
that hath been done? The same that shall be done."
--_Ecclesiastes i:10._
"To one small people . . . it was given to create the principle of
Progress. That people was the Greek. Except the blind forces of
nature, nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its
origin."
--Maine.
{63}
THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY [Footnote 6]
[Footnote 6: The material for this address was gathered for lectures
on the History of Education at St. Mary's Seminary, Scranton, Pa.,
and St. Joseph's College, Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia. It was
largely added to for the introductory lecture in a course to the
teachers of the parochial schools of Philadelphia, March, 1910. Very
nearly in its present form it was delivered before the Brooklyn
Institute of Arts and Sciences as the second lecture in the course
on "How Old The New Is," April, 1910.]
We are very prone to think that our universities represent new
developments in the history of humanity. We are aware that there were
great educational institutions in the world at many times before the
present, and that some of them profoundly affected the intellectual
life of their time; we are likely to think, however, that these
institutions were very different from our modern universities. They
were not so well organized, they lacked endowments, their departments
were not co-ordinated, they did not have the libraries and, of course,
not the laboratory facilities that our modern universities have, and
then, above all, they did not devote themselves to that one department
of knowledge, physical science, in which absolute truth can be
reached, and in which each advance in knowledge as made can be
chronicled and set down as a sure basis for future work and workers in
the same line for all time. {64} The older institutions of learning
were given up to speculation, to idealism, to metaphysics, and, of
course, therefore, their work, as many educated people are now prone
to look at it, was too shadowy to last, too cloudy to serve as a
foundation for any enduring scientific knowledge. I do not think that
I exaggerate when I make this as the statement of the thought of a
good many people of our time who are at least supposed to be educated
and who consider that they are reasonably familiar with the
educational institutions of the past.
It has seemed to me, then, that it would be interesting and opportune
to trace the origin, the development and the accomplishments of the
first institution of learning that is very similar to our own; and to
retrace some of the achievements of its professors, the circumstances
in which they were done and the conditions surrounding an ancient
school which I think our study will make clear as well deserving of
the title of the first modern university. This was not the collection
of schools at Athens, though there is no doubt at all that great
intellectual and educational work was accomplished there, but not in
our modern university sense. The schools were independent, and while
the rivalry engendered by this undoubtedly did good so long as genius
ruled in the schools, it brought about a degeneration into sophistry,
from here comes the word, and argumentativeness, once the great master
had been {65} displaced by disciples who were sure that they knew
their master's mind, and probably thought, as disciples always do,
that they were going beyond their master, but who really occupied
themselves with curious and trifling tergiversations of mind within
the narrow circle of ideas laid down by the master,--as has nearly
always been the case.
The first modern university was that of Alexandria. It was quite as
much under Greek influence as the schools of Athens. There have been
commentators on the story of Cleopatra, who have suggested that her
African cast of countenance did not prove a deterrent to her success
as a conqueror of hearts, and who argue from this to the fact that it
is not physical charm but personality that counts in woman's power
over men, quite forgetting, if they ever knew, that Cleopatra was a
Greek of the Greeks, a daughter of the line of the Ptolemys, probably
a direct descendant though with the bar sinister of Philip of Macedon,
born of a house so watchful over its Greek blood and so resentful of
any possible admixture of anything less noble with itself, that for
generations it had been the custom for brother to marry sister, in
order that the race of the Ptolemys might be perpetuated in absolute
purity. Alexandria, while a cosmopolitan city in the inhabitants who
dwelt in it and in the wide diffusion of commercial interests that
centred there as a mart for East and West, was absolutely ruled by
Greeks and represents for many centuries after {66} the decline of
Athens had come, the brightest focus of Greek intellectual life, Greek
culture and art, Greek letters and education and every phase of that
Greek influence in aesthetics which has always meant so much in the
world's history.