- It does not appear clearly in any of the published descriptions
of these ancient Greek sanatoria just what were the relations between the priests and the men who utilized all this rich clinical material—records of all sorts of diseases, and the means (other than religious) employed in treating them, pictures or plastic reproductions of the visible pathological lesions, etc.—for the purpose of instructing the younger men who contemplated engaging in the practice of medicine. The modern teachers of the art know very well how difficult is the task of combining in a satisfactory manner these two things—the safeguarding of the patient's interests and the utilization of their maladies as object lessons for men who are preparing to cure or relieve the bodily ills of those who may at some future moment need their professional services. To them, therefore, it would be a matter of very great interest to learn how this difficult problem had been solved nearly twenty-five hundred years ago. But, unfortunately, no satisfactory data upon which a trustworthy account might be founded are obtainable, and we are obliged to fall back upon such aid as our imagination may furnish. From Puschmann's work on medical teaching in ancient times the following statement relating to the subject has been taken:—
The priests in the Aesculapian temples were not, as is generally
assumed, physicians in the ordinary sense. They may have
acquired some knowledge of the art, and they may even in some
instances have been regularly trained physicians, but the important
fact remains that they wished it to be understood that the treatment
carried out in the temple was in accordance with revelations made
to them by the god Aesculapius, and not the mere fruit of human
knowledge. Consequently the intervention of regular physicians
in the temple management of the sick must have appeared to them
quite superfluous. For this reason, therefore, it is not likely that
there existed, on the part of either the temple priests or the
physicians, any feeling of animosity or opposition. It is more
likely that the contrary was the case, for the evidence shows that
the physicians—the Asclepiadae—paid most humble reverence to
the sacred relics of Aesculapius, and placed the most implicit
confidence in the opinions which he was supposed to give in
desperate cases.
