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34
ANCIENT TIMES.
THE GREEKS BEFORE HIPPOKRATES.
THE earliest information concerning the medical science of
the Greeks is veiled in mythical surroundings. In these
APOLLO appears as a god sending diseases and pestilences
but also vouchsafing the remedies to cure them and control
their power for evil. When, later on, the several characteristic
powers and attributes of this god of Light,—who in
the worship of a primitive people obvipusly represented the
Sun were personified and obtained separate representatives,
ASKLEPIOS assumed the character of the God of the
healing art. Tradition spoke of him as the son of
APOLLO, in order to give expression to the intimate
relations of the two. Enlightened Greeks of a later age
explained this in an allegorical manner when they said:
" If ASKLEPIOS is the air,—indispensable to the health of
man and beast, yet APOLLO is the sun and rightly is he
called the father of ASKLEPIOS, for the sun by his yearly
course makes the air wholesome."* HOMER and PlNDAR
celebrate the cures of ASKLEPIOS ; but neither they nor
HESIOD call him a god. How the fame of his cures, preserved
by legend and enlarged by posterity gradually led
to his apotheosis, unfortunately no information has been
handed down to us. Later on, temples were erected to
him, and by fervent worshippers powers ascribed to him
similar to those of ZEUS the creator and preserver of all
things. The poets, who, as HERODOTUSt says, found
serviceable material in mythology, adorn the narratives of
the birth and life of ASKLEPIOS with their rich fancy.
PlNDAR states that he was instructed in medical science by
the centaur CHEIRON : he was taken to CHEIRON " that he
might teach him the ways of healing diseases which bring
many woes on mankind. All who approached him suffering
from ulcers arising from internal causes, those too whose
members were injured by the sword or by the stone slung
* PAUSANIAS vii, 23. t HERODOT. ii, 53.