CHAP. 1. (1.)—THE ORIGIN OF THE MEDICAL ART.
The nature and multiplicity of the various remedies already described or which still remain to be enlarged upon, compel me to enter upon some further details with reference to the art of medicine itself: aware as I am, that no one2451 has hitherto treated of this subject in the Latin tongue, and that if all new enterprises are difficult or of doubtful success, it must be one in particular which is so barren of all charms to recommend it, and accompanied with such difficulties of illustration. It will not improbably suggest itself, however, to those who are familiar with this subject, to make enquiry how it is that in the practice of medicine the use of simples has been abandoned, so convenient as they are and so ready prepared to our hand: and they will be inclined to feel equal surprise and indignation when they are informed that no known art, lucrative as this is beyond all the rest, has been more fluctuating, or subjected to more frequent variations.
Commencing by ranking its inventors in the number of the gods,2452 and consecrating for them a place in heaven, the art of medicine, at the present day even, teaches us in numerous instances to have recourse to the oracles for aid. In more recent times again, the same art has augmented its celebrity, at the cost perhaps of being charged with criminality, by devising the fable that Æsculapius was struck by lightning for presuming to raise Tyndareus2453 to life. And this example notwithstanding, it has not hesitated to relate how that others, through its agency, have since been restored to life. Already enjoying celebrity in the days of the Trojan War, its traditions from that period have acquired an additional degree of certainty; although in those times, we may remark, the healing art confined itself solely to the treatment of wounds.