Athothis : a satire on modern medicine / by Thomas C. Minor.

than at the present day. For it was even then written that, i God created the physician and physic. He hath given wisdom to man and to him that healeth man.' Even Hippocrates acknowledged that medicine was the invention of the divinity. Did not Cicero contend that the practice of the healing art was sacred ? Ah ! these ancients had a higher appreciation of medical wisdom than your moderns, for they erected beautiful temples to the founders of the profession, to Osiris and Isis, to Apollo and Minerva. You scoff at the medical knowl- edge of antiquity, yet seek to give a poor imitation of its methods. You deride the learned magi of the Orient, and believe that the scientists of this age possess all the wisdom of the past and present. We have just witnessed the learned consultation of Doctors Billem, Pillem, and Killem, perfect types of the specialists of the day; think you that their attainments are greater than those of the fathers of medicine ? Yet, you endeavor to impress the modern public with the idea that all real knowledge of the healing art is new, that the accumulated erudition of the past is nothing. Has not Celsus truthfully claimed that ' medicine and mankind are coeval.' Has not Pliny written that ' while some nations have existed without doctors, none ever lived without physic' ? It is an easy matter to assert that ancient physicians killed millions of patients through ignorance. Can you deny that they may not have healed an equal number ? But, see ! Killem is standing in the center of the room preparing another hypodermic of morphia for his suffering client. And you remarked that this eminent practitioner was a strict member of an orthodox church; nevertheless, he is now preparing to violate, though ignorant of the fact, the sixth commandment."