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In the progress of civilization, various fortuitous incidents,^[12] and even errors in the choice and preparation of aliments, must have gradually unfolded the remedial powers of many natural substances; these were recorded, and the authentic history of medicine may date its commencement from the period when such records began.

The Chaldeans and Babylonians, we are told by Herodotus, carried their sick to the public roads and markets, that travellers might converse with them, and communicate any remedies which had been successfully used in similar cases; this custom continued during many ages in Assyria; and Strabo states that it prevailed also amongst the ancient Lusitanians, or Portuguese: in this manner, however, the results of experience descended only by oral tradition; it was in the temple of Esculapius in Greece that medical information was first recorded; diseases and cures were there registered on durable tablets of marble; the priests^[13] and priestesses, who were the guardians of the temple, prepared the remedies and directed their application, and thus commenced the profession of Physic. With respect to the actual nature of these remedies, it is useless to inquire; the lapse of ages, loss of records, change of language, and ambiguity of description, have rendered every learned research unsatisfactory; indeed we are in doubt with regard to many of the medicines which even Hippocrates employed. It is however clearly shewn by the earliest records, that the ancients were in the possession of many powerful remedies; thus Melampus of Argos, the most ancient Greek physician with whom we are acquainted, is said to have cured one of the Argonauts of sterility, by administering the rust of iron in wine for ten days; and the same physician used hellebore as a purge, on the daughters of king Prætus, who were afflicted with melancholy. Venesection was also a remedy of very early origin; for Podalirius, on his return from the Trojan war, cured the daughter of Damethus, who had fallen from a height, by bleeding her in both arms. Opium, or a preparation of the poppy, was certainly known in the earliest ages; it was probably opium that Helen mixed with wine, and gave to the guests of Menelaus, under the expressive name of nepenthe,^[14] to drive away their cares, and increase their hilarity; and this conjecture receives much support from the fact, that the nepenthe of Homer was obtained from the Egyptian Thebes;^[15] and if we may credit the opinion of Dr. Darwin, the Cumæan Sibyll never sat on the portending tripod without first swallowing a few drops of the juice of the Cherry-laurel.^[16]