whether free or slaves. Whatsoever in my practice or not in my practice I shall see or hear amid the lives of men which ought not to be noised abroad—as to this I will keep silence, holding such things unfitting to be spoken.
And now if I shall fulfil this oath and break it not, may the fruits of life and of art be mine, may I be honored of all men for all time; the opposite if I shall transgress and be forsworn.
(Translated from the Greek by the late John G. Curtis, M.D., of New York.)
While at first, according to Puschmann, many physicians
did not belong to the Aesculapian Brotherhood, there came
a time when all were known as Asclepiadae.
Influence of the Schools of Philosophy on the Growth of Medical Knowledge.—About the beginning of the sixth century B. C. there developed, in Greece and its colonies, schools of philosophy which exerted a most excellent influence upon the growth of medicine. The first of these was the one known as the Ionian School, whose founders and chief representatives were Thales, of Miletus in Ionia (born in 640, died in 548 B. C.), and his pupils Anaximander and Anaximenes. The guiding principle of these men was to study natural phenomena and to learn, if possible, their causes and the laws of their action. Physiology, therefore, became one of their special studies, and thus they contributed to the laying of one of the most important foundation-stones of medicine. Thanks to the good quality of the work of instruction that had thus far been carried on at Cos, Cnidus, and other Asclepieia, medicine had by this time reached a sufficient degree of development for its devotees to derive a full measure of benefit from the new teaching of the philosophers. Well grounded in the observation of disease in its different forms and modes of behavior, and also familiarized with the ordinary methods of treatment, these physicians needed to be shown a new route along which they might advance to greater heights of knowledge, and they also needed to be stimulated to further endeavor. The introduction of the new school accomplished both of these purposes. It taught the men of the older organizations that they must make much
