II. DA CAPO. By Miss Thackeray. Part II., Advance Sheets, Westminster Review, 451 New Quarterly Review, 469 V. THE RESTORATION OF THE ANCIENT SYS- VII. THE BLACK MUSEUM, . VIII. WILLIAM AND MARY HOWITT, Nature, Frau von Ingersleben, Leisure Hour, European Mail, Pall Mall Gazette, X. THE MENNONITE COMMUNISTS, THE ANGELS' GREETING, POETRY. 450 BIDE A WEE, AND DINNA FRET, 450 PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY 450 450 For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. An extra copy of THE LIVING AGE is sent gratis to any one getting up a ciub of Five New Subscribers. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & GAY. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents. THE ANGELS' GREETING. COME to the land of peace! Come where the tempest hath no longer sway, The shadow passes from the soul away, The sounds of weeping cease. DEAD, YET SPEAKING. BY THE AUTHOR OF "JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN." "I have been dying for years; now I shall begin to live." These were almost the last words of the Rev. James Drummond Burns, minister of the Presbyterian Church at Hampstead, who died of consumption abroad, in 1865, deeply beloved and lamented. DEAD, and alive again. Alive to us, Who through the long, long lapse of years still mark The after-glow thy sunset luminous Alive to God, and to his work divine, Though in what sphere we know not, nor need know: Content to follow those dear steps of thine, Bethink thee, how the storms from heaven descending Snap the stiff oak, but spare the willow bend. ing, And bide a wee, and dinna fret., Grief sharper sting doth borrow But yesterday is gone, and shall its sorrow An over-anxious brooding A host of fears and fantasies deluding; S. E. G. From The Westminster Review. PRE-CHRISTIAN DISPENSARIES AND HOSPITALS.* FEW movements of recent times have acquired more popularity than the "Saturday" and "Sunday" Hospital Fund. The terrible fact of pain and suffering ap peals to our common humanity, and awakens the deepest feelings of sympathy in the hearts of rich and poor alike: Non ignara mali miseris succurrere disco." 66 The movement has also called forth some inquiry as to the origin of hospitals, and Jews and Christians both contend for the honor of having given the first hospital to mankind. The impression that hospitals are a Christian innovation is much more widely spread than persons competent to judge of its legitimacy might suppose. Canon Farrar, in a " Life of Christ" which has acquired some popularity, says, "Amidst all the boasted civilization of antiquity there existed no hospitals, no penitentiaries, no asylums." Professor Lightfoot stated, at the opening of a hospital last year, that hospitals were "a creation of Christianity." It may, therefore, be of some interest to trace the history of the rise of hospitals in the nations of antiquity; and to show that they have not been confined to any one age or nation, and that they are the natural outcome of that tender compassion for suffering humanity which is characteristic of all civilizations and of every cultured religion. The hospital is simply the development of the dispensary, which is a necessary requirement of the medical officer appointed and paid by the State for the relief of the sick poor. Some room is required by the medical officer in which to see his patients and dispense the drugs, and this * 1. Mélanges Egyptologiques: La Médecine des Anciens Egyptiens. Par F. CHABAS. Chalon-sur Saone. 1862. 2. Euvres d' Hippocrate: Introduction. LITTRE. Paris. 1839. Par E. These medical officers were an institu tion in Egypt from a remote antiquity, for in the eleventh century B.C. there was a college of physicians in the receipt of public pay, and regulated by law as to the nature and extent of their practice. At Athens, in the fifth century B.C., there were physicians elected and paid by the citizens; there were also dispensaries in which they received their patients, and we find mention made of one hospital. In the fourth century B.C. an edict was promulgated in India by King Asoka commanding the establishment of hospitals throughout his dominions; and we have direct proof that these hospitals were flourishing in the fifth and in the seventh centuries A.D. There was probably a leper-house outside the walls of Jerusalem; and medical officers were attached in early times to the temple, and in later times to the synagogues. Among the Romans under the empire, physicians were elected in every city in proportion to the number of inhabitants, and they received a salary from the public. treasury. And the ancient Mexicans had hospitals in the principal cities “for the cure of the sick, and the permanent refuge of disabled soldiers." Army surgeons are of very remote antiquity, for we read of them in Homer; and they won the admiration of Plato, because "they were heroes as well as physicians;" but there is no notice of the military hospital before the reign of Hadrian. Hospitals exclusively for the treatment of the insane are of comparatively modern growth, and are first 3. Travels of Fa-Hian from China to India. By found among the Mohammedans; they S. BEAL. London: Trübner & Co. 1869. LAS JULIEN. Paris. 1853. afterwards spread among Christian coun 4. Voyages des Pèlerins Buddhistes. Par STANIS-tries, the earliest being found in Spain, the country most influenced by Mohammedan thought.* 5. Histoire des Médecins Juifs Anciens et Modernes. Par E. CARMOLY. Bruxelles. 1844. 6. Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms in der zeit von August bis zum Ausgang der Antonine. Von L. FRIEDLANDER. Leipzig. 1869. * Desmaisons, Des Asiles d'Aliénés en Espagne, It was around the temples that the early | expel from his body; those seven shall medical schools centred, for it was natural never return to the sick man."* to regard the "divine art of healing" as a gift of the gods. It is Brahma who writes the Ayur-Veda, the science of life; it is Esculapius who appears in human form at Epidaurus and extends his saving right hand over all the earth to heal the souls that are in error and the bodies that are diseased; † and Prometheus in the midst of his sufferings declares that he has gifted mankind with the true science of medicine. The priests were the first physicians; and on the walls of the temples of Egypt and of Greece were suspended the observations and the votive tablets of the cures they effected. These tablets are very curious, because they are a strange medley of rational medical treatment with the superstition of charms and incantations; and they are most important, because they not unfrequently enable us to trace the rise of scepticism in the charm and incantation, and the struggle between the waning power of the priest and the increasing skill of the physician. The Babylonians and Assyrians alone, among the great nations of antiquity, had no physicians. The sick man was laid on a couch in the public square, and the passers-by were required to ask him the nature of his disease, so that if they or any of their acquaintance had been similarly afflicted, they might advise him as to the remedies he should adopt.§ This custom commended itself to Herodotus, who thought it almost as wise as their other custom of selling the girls of the village in marriage, so that the "fairer maidens portioned off the plainer." As a consequence, incantations to drive out the evil spirit of disease were in much request, and the nature of their operation may be gathered from the following tablet: "God shall stand by his bedside; those seven evil spirits he shall root out and Paris, 1859. W. E. H. Lecky, Hist. of European Cicero, Tusc. Dis., iii. 1. xxix. 1. † Emp. Julian contr. Christ. Esch., Prometheus, 476 sq. (1.) Egypt claimed the invention of medicine. This claim is partially recognized in Homer, when Polydamna gives medici. nal herbs to Helen in Egypt, "a country producing an infinite number of drugs, and where the physician possesses knowledge above all other men;" and is fully endorsed by M. Chabas after a careful comparison of the medical papyrus at Berlin with the best medical works of Greece and Rome.§ The extreme antiquity of medical science in Egypt may be inferred from the fact that the medical papyrus at Berlin, fourteenth century B.C., contains the copy of a treatise on inflammation (ouchet) which was found "written in ancient writing, rolled up in a coffer under the feet of an Anubis in the town of Sokhem (Letopolis), in the time of his sacred Majesty Thot the Righteous. After his death it was handed on to King Snat on account of its importance. It was then restored to its place under the feet of the statue, and sealed up by the sacred scribe and wise chief of the physicians." || Medical science attained so high a degree of perfection in Egypt, that there were specialists in the different branches of the art, and the physician was only allowed to practise in his own branch. There were oculists and dentists, those who treated mental disorders, and those who investigated obscure diseases—oi de twv áḍaveŵv vovov. There are medical papyri which treat of these several diseases. In the Hermaic books a whole chapter is devoted to diseases of the eye, and mummies have been found in Thebes with their teeth stopped in gold.** Athothos, son and successor to Menes, the first king of Egypt, wrote a book on anatomy.†† The H. F. Talbot, Assyrian Talismans and Exorcisms. ↑ Pliny, Nat. Hist., vii. 56. Mélanges Egypt., La Médecine des Anciens Herod., ii. 84. See Sir G. Wilkinson's valuable § Herod. i. 197, iii. 129. Strabo, xvi. c. 1. ** A skeleton was found at Quito with false teeth secured with gold wire. Bollaert, Antiquities of N. Granada, p. 83. tt Manetho, quoted in Brugsch, Histoire d'Egypte. medical papyrus at Berlin contains a trea- | there were official houses to which the sick tise on midwifery, and not less than one hundred and seventy prescriptions for the cure of diseases, of which the diagnosis is carefully recorded.* In these treatises diseases are regarded as enemies, not simply to be cured, but to be attacked, destroyed, driven forth; † a vestige, apparently, of the ancient superstition that diseases were devils which possessed the patient. To guard the people against quacks and the rash experiments of young doctors, the Egyptian physicians were required to follow the rules laid down in the medical treatises preserved in the principal temple of each city; the idea being that the old must be better than the new. Aristotle, however, says that they were allowed to alter the orthodox treatment; yet if they did so, it was at their peril, as their own lives were forfeit for the life of the patient. § This rule, when followed, secured the physicians of Egypt from the accusation which Pliny brings against the profession in his day: "It is at the expense of our perils that they learn, and they experimentalize by putting us to death. The physician is the only person allowed to kill with impunity, the blame being thrown on the sick man who is dead and gone." || In Egypt, about the eleventh century B.C., there was a college of physicians, who seem to have belonged to the sacerdotal caste, as did also the embalmers who are styled "physicians " in Genesis. They were not confined to one sex; the sculptures confirm Exodus i. 15 that women practised medicine. poor repaired at fixed times, which correspond to our medical dispensaries. Although paid by the State, they were allowed to receive fees.* This care for the sick poor is a trait of character we might naturally expect from a people on whose sarcophagi we meet with inscriptions which tell how the deceased "succored the afflicted, gave bread to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, clothes to the naked, shelter to the outcast; that he opened his doors to the stranger, and was a father to the afflicted." In the time of Herodotus "every place in Egypt was full of doctors," whence Pliny concluded that no country was so unhealthy; yet Herodotus says that few countries were so salubrious, which he attributes to the uniformity of the climate.† Although the older papyri show that the medical treatment of disease was rational, post-mortems even being made to discover the source of disease, yet charms and incantations were by no means excluded; and dreams were granted to devout souls who had consulted physicians in vain, and the votive offerings of arms, ears, eyes, etc., which still adorn the ancient temples,§ show how readily the superstitious element found its place in Egypt, as it afterwards did in Greece and Rome,|| and as it does to this day in many European Christian countries. There is a curious inscription in the temple of the god Chonson at Thebes, which points to a struggle between reason and faith, between the skill of the physiThe physicians were the paid officers of cian and the prayer of the priest. Ramses the State, and we may therefore conclude XII. summons before him the "scribe of that they were required to treat the poor the houses of life," and orders him to gratuitously; ** and as they were not likely select one who shall be "a man of an to attend the sick in their own houses, ex-intelligent heart and skilful fingers," that cept in extreme cases, we may further he may be sent to cure the young princess assume that, as in the case of Athens, of Bouchten. She is the "little sister" of the royal wife, and bears the Semitic name Bentrash. The physician fails to cure the damsel, for she is possessed with Translated by Brugsch, Notice raisonné d'un Traité médical datant du XIV me Siècle avant notre ère; and Chabas, Mélanges Egypt., i. ↑ Chabas, i. 79. Diod. Sic., i. 82. § Pol., iii. 11. Nat. Hist., xxix. 1. Brugsch, Hist d'Egypte, c. ix. ** Sir G. Wilkinson in Herod., loc. cit. |
