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seeking him everywhere, incubated in the sacred chamber of Asclepios for his son, and had a dream. The god seemed to take him to a certain place and showed him his son there. So, leaving the chamber, and quarrying a passage through the rocks, he found his son on the seventh day.

(5) Sostrata pregnant (?) for a year.

She came in a litter to the temple, but since she saw no clear vision she returned home. On the way a man of noble aspect met her and her attendants near Kornus; and, hearing from the latter of her evil plight, bade them set down the litter on which they carried Sostrata; then opening her belly he took out a vast multitude of —?— filling ?— footpans, and sewing her up healed her. Then, bidding them send the offerings for the cure to Epidaurus, Asclepios disappeared.

(6) A dog cured a boy of angina. This patient had a swelling in his neck, and, having come to the god, one of the temple dogs healed him with his tongue while wide awake.

(7) A man with an ulcer in his stomach. He incubated and saw a vision; the god seemed to order his followers to seize and hold him, that he might incise his stomach; so he fled, but they caught and tied him to the door-knocker (?) (πôí poπтóν). Then Asclepios opened his stomach, cut out the ulcer, sewed him up again, and loosed his bonds. He went away whole, but the floor of the chamber was covered with his blood.

(8) Cleonetas of Thebes, he with the lice. This man having a vast quantity of lice on him came and incubated and saw a vision. The god seemed to strip him, and setting him up naked cleaned the lice from his body with a broom. And when it was day he left the chamber healed.

(9) Agestratos, headache. This patient was sleepless from pain in the head; but when he was in the chamber he slept and dreamt a dream. The god seemed to cure his headache, and then set him up naked, and taught him a grip in the pancratium. At daybreak he departed cured, and soon after won the pancratium at Nemæa.

(10) Gorgias of Heraclea, empyema. This man being wounded in the lung in a certain battle carried the weapon in his body eighteen months and discharged sufficient pus to fill sixty-seven porringers. When he slept he saw a vision, the god extracted the spear-point from his lung and placed it in his hands, and

at daybreak he went away whole, taking the weapon with him.

The rest of the pillar is very fragmentary, and though largely restored by ingenious philologists need not detain us; but, together with the above pillars, another votive epigraph was discovered, five centuries later in date, and forming an instructive contrast to them :

"Under the priesthood of P. Ælius Antiochus. I, M. Julius Apellas, of Idrias and Mylasa (towns in Caria), was sent here by the god, often falling into diseases and being troubled by indigestion. Now, on the voyage, while in Ægina, he bade me not lose my temper so often, and when I came to the temple he commanded me to cover my head for two days-it rained during that time-to take bread and cheese with celery and lettuce, to wash myself with my own hands, to exercise running, to drink lemonade (water with the tops of citron, Kítpɩov tà åkpa, in it); to walk on the roof, swing, rub myself with sand, go barefoot; to pour wine into the hot bath water, to wash myself, and pay the bathman a drachma; to make offerings to Asclepios, Epione and the Eleusinian goddesses, and to take milk and honey. One day when I took milk only the god said: 'Put honey in, that it may act as a laxative'. But, when I asked the god to cure me more quickly, I dreamt I was rubbed all over with salt and mustard, and that I was led out of the chamber by a boy with a censer, while the priest said: 'You are cured, now pay the fee'. So I did as I dreamt; when I rubbed in the salt and mustard it was painful, but the pain went off after washing. So it happened during the first nine days. Then he touched me (in a dream) on my right hand and breast, and the next day, as I sacrificed, the fire burnt my hand so that it blistered, but it soon recovered. Then, as I still waited, he bade me rub in oil of anise for headache; but I had no headache. Still the oracle was true, for I got a headache as a result of philosophic studies, and when I used the oil it departed. For quinsy and sore throat (for I besought the god for this also) he recommended gargling with cold water. And he bade me also write this down, so I departed thankful and cured."

The above cases show that Asclepios did not confine himself to curing the sick, and this is evidenced by another inscription of the same date as the pillars, which throws much light on the

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mythology of the deity. Isyllos, a sickly youth from Bosporus in Argolis, went in the terrible year B.C. 338 to the temple and prayed for health. The god appeared, but he was dressed in shining armour, and said he had no time to attend to patients as he was off to Sparta to defend the City of Lycurgus against Philip of Macedon. So Isyllos went there to tell the joyful news, and on the retreat of the enemy the Spartans instituted a yearly festival in honour of the god.. In after years Isyllos wrote a long poem in praise of Asclepios and set it up in the temple.

Some writers try to account for the wonderful cures above noticed by supposing that the priests were remarkably skilled in mesmerism and surgery; a simpler explanation will probably occur to most readers. The question for us, however, is: What has this dream oracle, with its dogs and snakes and bare-faced quackery, to do with the Hippocratic medicine? The old theory was that Greek medical science had its origin in the temples, and that the early physicians, especially those called "Asclepiada," were priests of Asclepios. Hippocrates himself was supposed to be such a priest, who by the strength of his genius finally separated medicine from theology. Some of the reasons for rejecting this are given in the text, and they are strengthened by all recent discoveries. The above inscriptions, for instance, seem to indicate the very opposite process. The earlier cases (those recorded on the pillars) are purely theurgic; they are intended to show the direct action of the deity, and form a most striking contrast to the Hippocratic writings with which they were contemporary. Their whole spirit is obviously antagonistic to any attempt at rational medicine or medical teaching. Apellas, on the other hand, received much the same treatment at Epidaurus as he would have had from a Methodic physician, or perhaps even from Galen himself. The priests seem to have found that pure miracles did not pay, and so gradually added as much medicine as was possible without entirely obscuring the divine element. What is known of the priests themselves is gathered mainly from inscriptions found on the site. of the temple of Asclepios at Athens. We learn from these that the priests were chosen yearly by lot; and, of the numerous names which have been preserved, one only has the additional title of physician, facts which conclusively prove that the priests of Asclepios were not necessarily medical men.

The evidence from the side of the physicians is of the same kind. We know about a dozen practitioners (including Hippocrates. and his sons) who are called Asclepiadæ. Not one of them is ever spoken of as a priest, nor are they ever found in temples of Asclepios. The books of the Hippocratic collection were probably all written by members of the Asclepiad guild; but the name of the god is only once mentioned, in the famous Oath, where it is connected with those of other deities. Yet the writers do not ignore the gods. Even the free-thinking author of the treatise on epilepsy says that an epileptic should pray for health. "Certain interpreters of dreams (says the writer of the treatise on regimen) tell their patients to pray to the gods only. It is very meet and right that a sick man should pray to the gods, but he should help himself at the same time." He afterwards gives a list of gods who may be prayed to, but Asclepios is not among them. This neglect of the special god of medicine, incredible in the case of his own priests, is strange in any case, but may perhaps be partially explained by considering the history of his worship. Asclepios seems to have been a Thessalian earth god, who revealed himself to his sleeping worshippers (especially when sick) in woods, caves, and near springs. As early as the ninth century his fame had spread to the Ionian Greeks, who, however, looked upon him merely as a petty chief of Thessaly skilled in medicine. But the neighbouring Dorians had already adopted his worship, converting him into a son of their own national deity, Apollo, and they brought him with them in their southward migration. By them the worship of Asclepios was introduced into other branches of the Greek race, the various local health deities, Hygeia, Panacea, etc., being converted into his children, just as he had become son of Apollo. Now, Cos and Cnidus, though nominally Dorian colonies, were largely inhabited by Ionians; the Hippocratic treatises are written in a dialect closely allied to the Ionic, and the authors (the Asclepiade) seem to have held the Ionic view of Asclepios, viz., that he was a mere man, the founder of their guild, and the direct ancestor of its more prominent members.

NOTES.

The inscriptions are translated from the originals published in the Ephemeris Archæologike, 1883-85. In the case of Apellas I have been

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much assisted by the commentary of Konrad Zacher, Hermes, vol. xxi., and the translation of Wilamowitz Möllendorf, Isyllos von Epidauros, 1886. There is a complete French translation by Reinach, Revue Archéologique, 1884-85. See also Girard L'Asclepieion d'Athenes, Paris,

1881.

APPENDIX III.

MEDIEVAL MONASTIC MEDICINE.

THE obscurity which covers the origin of Greek medicine, and its revival in the West during the middle ages, tempted the earlier historians of our art to seize upon any plausible explanation which presented itself, and they declared that the first had its source in the temples of Esculapius, and the second in the monasteries of St. Benedict, especially through the foundation of the school of Salerno by the monks of Monte Cassino. This latter theory, though maintained by no responsible historian since Puccinotti, is still repeated by uncritical compilers, and it may be worth while to enforce the reasons against it taken from the history of the school (see p. 185) by a brief examination of the subject from the side of the monastery.

Our knowledge of the early history of Monte Cassino is derived mainly from the writings of two of its monks, Leo, afterwards Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, who entered the monastery in 1060, and Peter, the deacon, who lived half a century later, and not only continued his predecessor's chronicle, but also wrote a series of biographies of illustrious abbots and monks. Both historians are proud of their monastery, and are careful to record every case in which it took part in external affairs; they wrote at a time when Salerno was at the height of its fame, the admiration of Europe; and, if the monastery had any claim to be the mother of the school, they would hardly have omitted to say so. For they by no means disregard medical matters, and speak with much admiration of Constantine, the African; but the other notices are very scanty, and there is not the slightest hint of anything approaching a school of medicine. Leo tells us that Abbot Bertharius wrote many works both in prose and poetry,