Medical History from the Earliest Times: A Popular History of the Healing Art

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Scientific Press, 1894 - History of Medicine - 424 pages
This is a classic brief history up to the early 19th century.

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Page 131 - is full of mechanics and slaves, who are all of them profound theologians ; and preach in the shops, and in the streets. If you desire a man to change a piece of silver, he informs you wherein the Son differs from the Father; if you ask the price of a loaf, you are told, by way of reply, that the Son is inferior to the Father ; and if you inquire whether the bath is ready, the answer is, that the Son was made out of nothing.
Page 136 - Muslim writers whom they styled with reluctant admiration 'learned savages,' while the less cultured Christians soon came to look upon the wisdom of the Saracens as something more than human. It was this people who now took from the hands of unworthy successors of Galen and Hippocrates the flickering torch of Greek medicine. They failed to restore its ancient splendour, but they at least prevented its extinction, and they handed it back after five centuries burning more brightly than before.
Page 25 - Surgery, however, is his aim, " the first and best of the medical sciences ; less liable than any other to the fallacies of conjectural and inferential practice; pure in itself, perpetual in its applicability ; the worthy produce of heaven, and certain source of fame.
Page 207 - When you want to saw or cut a man, dip a rag in this and put it to his nostrils.' Modern experiments suggest that this could not have been a very powerful anaesthetic, and various attempts to improve it were made during the Middle Ages, including, by the 16th century, the use of alcohol fumes.
Page 30 - ... on a clean garment, and visit that hall together with his ministers. And being endued with a heart full of kindness, he would look at the sick with an eye of pity, and being eminent in wisdom and skilled in the art of healing, he would call before him the physicians that were employed there and inquire fully of the manner of their treatment. And if so be that it happened that...
Page 222 - Four huge hospital tents, the careful provision of queenly piety, are a sight worth seeing. They are intended not only for the wounded, but for those labouring under any disease. The physicians, apothecaries, surgeons, and other attendants are as numerous, the order, diligence and supply of all things needful as complete as in your suburban Infirmary of the Holy Spirit, or the great Milan Hospital itself.
Page 16 - Ny' he will live; if 'Ba' he will die." For soothing a crying baby a mixture of fly dung and the seeds of the plant schepen was recommended. Schepen was probably our poppy. Here is a prescription against witchcraft: "A beetle — cut off his head and wings ; boil him and put him in oil, and apply to the part. Then cook his head and wings, put them in serpent's fat; warm it, and let the patient drink it.
Page 385 - Then give place to the physician, for the LORD hath created him : let him not go from thee, for thou hast need of him.
Page 222 - For the care of the sick and wounded the queen sent always to the camp six large tents and their furniture, together with physicians, surgeons, medicines and attendants, and commanded that they should charge nothing, for she would pay for all. These tents were called the Queen's Hospital.
Page 212 - He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord : and look, what he layeth out, it shall be paid him again. Prov. xix. Blessed be the man that provideth for the sick and needy : the Lord shall deliver him in the time of trouble.

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