The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1892-08-11
Mental Medicine.
IA lecture delivered by Mrs. Sarah
Meader in Belfast, Aug. 2, 1892.
THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE.

TIIE HISTORY OF MEDICINE.
One of the greatest problems of to- day,
if not the greatest, is how to get well and
how to keep well. Nothing is SO lightly
valued as health, until it is impaired, or
lost, and nothing so eagerly sought after as
its recovery, or SO highly priced as its re-
possession Wealth is much, and means
much to the masses, but health is beyond
all price. Hence that which processes to re-
restore health is most eagerly sought after,
and the question most anNiously discussed
10y the invalid is how to choose or what to
choose from among the thousand and one
remedies warranted as cure-alls by the
thousand and one different doctors or
heaters.
The invalid feels instinctiyely that there
must he something in the wide world to
minister to his weakness and intrmity:
something to break the chains which bind
him to Il life of disease and suffering.
How to get well becomes the one absorb
ING thought of his existence.
The history of medicine presents a very
curious chronicle of the manner in which
various ages have answered this need of
humanity.
We may infer, from the crude and I'M
satisfactory legends of the primitive
world, that the first remedies We're such
rs instinct prompted, and nature supplied,
lust as the wounded animal seeks out its
remedy from the soil and the heritage
about it. 1lerodotuS tells us the Babylon
ians and other heather nations laid their
sick and helpless by the waysde, in the
rope that some passer-by, being similarly
afflicted, might suggest a remedy for the
ill
Among others, the Gods were appealed
Sc tor help, and it became the custom,
when one had been thus healed of his
malady, to deposit in the temple of the
god to whom he had appealed full ac-
count of his symptoms and cure that the
next sufferer might take hope and
courage therefrom.
Again, later on, skilled priesthood
became the guardians OF health, and form
ed codes for the prevention and cure of
disease, such as we see eXemplitied in the
Mosaic dispensations and the later records
OF the Jewish church.
Among heather nations, we find Es-
culapius. who was so successful in healing
that he was deitied by the grateful and
impulsive Greeks, and temple after tenn
l,le was erected in his honor. His daugh-
ter Hygcia was also worslipped as the
H't'tNoS VI liSdltii, tIl'i HUM llGl lilC
zeal science of hygeine was called.
1t WAS also common to ascribe disease to
evil spirits or displeased divinities: and
propitiatory sacrifices. as methods of re-
lief, We're common: also the eXorcism of
evil spirits 10y means of charms or in
cantations
400 years b. c., IIippocrates gave to this
fallacy decided rebulle He advocated
physical causes for disease. and laid the
Ills that flesh is heir to. to four distinct
sourc $. Viz: ''yellow bile. black bile
blood and phlegm." the four hlmors of
flie body which We're perverted from their
proper action. Violent purgativts We're
his sovereign remedy. Diocles, lis imme-
diate successor, taught the beneticient eff
tects of bitter and sweet herbs.
-Arclepiades, of Alexandria, another
eminent physician OF ancient times, taught
the baletul effects Of drug medication. and
shed his light far down to the present day
in teaching that the body was formed of
corpuscles, animated with vital power. out
OF which action and reaction arose the
phenomena OF health and disease. He
tau@llt that the use of drugs aggravated
rather than re-adiuSted this perverted ac-
ton. and trusted much to the beneticient
operation OF diet. friction. and healthful
exercise. Galen. who lived hundred
years after Christ, was the most noted
physician of his time. He wrote over
three hundred volumes on the practice
OF medicine, greater part Of which We're
destroyed in the burning of the Temple of
Peace, at Rome.
While Galen was the strong advocate of
material remedies for disease he was the
frst to llomulgate the theory of mental
f., III
that the lneuma or Spirit which govern
ed the body was disturbed. and this dis
turbance made itself manifest in perverted
physical action. Gaen did not 60 into
metaphysical niceties OF the present day
III defining just what this ruling spirit was
t',it ii is certain that he located the dis
Tlrbng cause in the person $ own being
and far deeper than mere flesh blood and
bones.
/ Wouid have you note in these schools
of practice the same ideas which. in mod
TIED form, prevail o-lay. Verify i'll med
cine, as in everything else. there is nothing
new under the sun: and the men and
women of to-day, who pose as originators
of new methods of healing are only pre-
senting old doctrines in a new dress and
striving, as did those old time doctors, to
solve according to their light the still
perpiexing problem of health and disease
During the first fifteen centuries after
Christ, medical progress was blocked by
superstition and bgotry such as the world
had never known. The vilest nostrums were
Goncocted from the most filthy and dis
gushing sources. Dead mems bones, the
flesh and entrails of reptiles and animals
nauseous herbs distilled by uncanny pro-
eesses, charms, incantations, by any pre-
tender who had the skill to make himself
in a marked degree mysterious; in short
everything which could be culled from
earth. water, fire or air was called into
action for ministration in disease and
strange to say cured as fair a proportion
of diseases as the best devised methods
OF the present day. Men got well and
men died, just as now. and each school of
practice found its adherents and its OPP
ponents, and reaped its proportionate
measure OF success or failure.
We are coming nearer the truth, wheth-
er we will OF not. The best of every meth
cd has survived and the advance is sure
AS an outcome of all this teaching in the
medical line we have a people better fit
ted to reason for themselves, a broader
education in the matter of self help. and
happily a seeking after true and natural
remedies without reference to school or
creed.
The demand of the age is this, emphat-
cally. That the mystery which surrounds
The healing art be taken away, and meth