The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-06-09
MEDICAL HISTORY BEGINS IN 1900
 B. 6. IN EGYPT
Ioueer Beliefs of Ancients, Amounting to Supersti-
 tions, Still Prevail.

An exhibit pertaining to mediclne
 and it's history is in that part of the national museum building devoted lo American history and industrial arts: llAccordiner to it's many descrlptlVe anu instructive labels, the theory or dls- ease seems to have been studied rom time irnmemorial and attributed to many and divers causes. In primitive times disease was held to be a maleV- olent spirit assuming animate or 1n- animate material form and attacking the victim either with or without prov ocation Some of the savage and half civilized tribes believed this spirit act ed at the suggestion of human enc mics possessed of supernatural pow CTS thus a11ying it with sorcery,< witch Acraft and conjury, although other ihribes supposed that disease was kscaused by offended spirits of the dead
 Egyptian medicine is the earliest of
 which we have a written record It Hates as far back as 1850 B. c. In its prehistoric stage it was doubtless lfounded on superstition and pract1ced gby magic artsy but in it's earliest his ktoric period the sick were taken 10 1.-the market place where all who passed Eby and had suffered or seen a similar malady might lend their advice. Later imore orderly systems were evolved for Ithe treatment of the sick, Herodotus lbeing prominent in the reforms. But
 Egyptian medicine vanished before H66 Greek system SOOI1 dIl0I IL0 od-
 mission of the Greeks into Egypt in
 the latter part of the fourth century
 B. c.
 Greek medicine in its primitive pe- riod is mostly mythical, beginning with Melampus in about 400 B. o., land ending with Hippocrates 46O B. C.. kThe most prominent character was E EAesculapius, reputed son of Apollo and fCorenis and worshipped as the god lof medicine by both Greeks and Ro- N-- yTT7-z
 with the doctrines of Hippocrates be-
 aieved to be the seventeenth in descent
 tfrom Aesculapius, and known as the
 dather of medicine He separated med
 hcine from priestcraft, abolished d
 ,rellarrns. incantations and all forms of mysticism and pretense, teaching that kdisease was a process governed by natural law, and yielding to treat nents found by studying the symp- toms. A copy of the Hippocratic oath sworn to by all the pupils of Hippo | crates in about 40 B. c. is exhibited. I Among the ancient beliefs which tetiH persist in some sections is the kddea that disease is due to the inf1u- fence of an offended diety- Astrolo-
 sziats once maintained that disease
 was. caused by the influence of the
 planets and other heavenly bodies, and
 strang ge1y enough this idea persisted in
 Europe until the seventeenth century.
 in China the two controlling princi pies Of lie, ylr and yung,, repre- sentative of heat and moisture or male 1 and female were supposed to control disease, a. similar belief being followed lin Persia. Other beliefs relative to lthe theory of disease, include the old
 doctrine of .'humors.'' based upon the
 lrelative proportions and distributions
 of the fluids of the body, such as blood,
 ph1egm and bile, Hippocrates and Ga
 den being disciples of this school; an Aatonic theory, established by Ascle-
 gpIas or Aescu1apine and followed by
 ithe esoIidists'' or "methodists''; the
 v1tal1sts belief based upon the abnor- { mal action of the dynamic or vital