Note 67: — XIX.—MEDICINE AND SURGERY. (Table-Case H.)

The more serious side of Greek medicine is inseparably connected with the name of Hippokrates (born 460 B.C.), though the Koan school had existed some time before his birth. The Asklepiadae were originally members of a single clan, but the admission of persons from outside soon made the clan into a medical school. The famous Hippokratean oath, imposed upon members of the Koan school, shows the standard set up before the medical profession: "I will conduct the treatment of the sick for their advantage, to the best of my ability and judgment, and I will abstain from all evil and all injustice. I will administer poison to none, if asked to do so, nor will I ever make such a suggestion. I will pass my life and exercise my art in innocence and purity." In Greece there were both public and private physicians. There were further dispensaries, or perhaps more accurately surgeries, called ἰατρεῖα. These were furnished with the necessary surgical and medical appliances. The scene from a fifth century vase-painting (No. 556; fig. 223)67 depicts a young surgeon at work in an ἰατρεῖον. He is operating on a patient's arm (perhaps bleeding him), while another man, also wounded in the arm, sits before him. A dwarf slave is ushering other patients into the surgery, where bleeding-cups are seen hanging on the wall. Patients also went to the ἰατρεῖα to get draughts of medicine.68 Before the Alexandrian age it is probable that medicine was in advance of surgery, for up to that time no scientific study of anatomy had been attempted. Aristotle observes that the internal organs of the human body were in his time very little known,69 and what dissection there was must have been practised on animals. The terracotta model (No. 122; fig. 36, above) of the heart, liver, lungs and kidneys shows how vague the ancient idea as to the position of these organs sometimes was.