Note 6 — ORATION.

“As for Medicine, something of it must have been understood in that age, though it was so far from perfection, that, according to Celsus, (book i.) what concerned diet was invented long after by Hippocrates. The accidents of life make the search after remedies too indispensable a duty to be neglected at any time; accordingly, he tells us, that the Egyptians, who had many medicinal plants in their country, were all Physicians, and perhaps he might have learnt his own skill from his acquaintance with that nation.

“The state of war in which Greece lived, required a knowledge in the healing of wounds, and this might make him breed his princes, Achilles, Patroclus, Podalirius and Machaon, to the science; what Homer thus attributes to others he himself knew, and he has given us reason to believe, not slightly, for if we consider his insight into the structure of the human body, it is so nice, that he has been judged by some to have wounded his heroes with too much science; or, if we observe his cure of wounds, which are the accidents proper to an epic poem, we find him directing the chirurgical operations, sometimes infusing lenitives, at other times bitter powders, when the effusion of blood required astringent qualities.”—Pope’s Essay on the Character of Homer.