63.  The Beginnings of Greek Medical Science.—­As we move about the city we cannot but be impressed by the high average of fine physiques and handsome faces.  Your typical Greek is fair in color and has very regular features.  The youths do not mature rapidly, but thanks to the gymnasia and the regular lives, they develop not merely admirable, but healthy, bodies.  The proportion of hale and hearty old men is great; and probably the number of invalids is considerably smaller than in later times and in more artificially reared communities.[*] Nevertheless, the Athenians are certainly mortal, and subject to bodily ills, and the physician is no unimportant member of society, although his exact status is much less clearly determined than it will be in subsequent ages.

[*]A slight but significant witness to the general healthiness of the Greeks is found in the very rare mention in their literature of such a common ill as toothache.

Greek medicine and surgery, as it appears in Homer, is simply a certain amount of practical knowledge gained by rough experience, largely supplemented by primitive superstition.  It was quite as important to know the proper prayers and charms wherewith to approach “Apollo the Healer,” as to understand the kind of herb poultice which would keep wounds from festering.  Homer speaks of Asclepius; however, in early days he was not a god, but simply a skilful leach.  Then as we approach historic times the physician’s art becomes more regular.  Asclepius is elevated into a separate and important deity, although it is not till 420 B.C. that his worship is formally introduced into Athens.  Long ere that time, however, medicine and surgery had won a real place among the practical sciences.  The sick man stands at least a tolerable chance of rational treatment, and of not being murdered by wizards and fanatical exorcists.

64.  Healing Shrines and their Methods.—­There exist in Athens and in other Greek cities real sanataria[*]; these are temples devoted to the healing gods (usually Asclepius, but sometimes Apollo, Aphrodite, and Hera).  Here the patient is expected to sleep over night in the temple, and the god visits him in a dream, and reveals a course of treatment which will lead to recovery.  Probably there is a good deal of sham and imposture about the process.  The canny priests know more than they care to tell about how the patient is worked into an excitable, imaginative state; and of the very human means employed to produce a satisfactory and informing dream.[+] Nevertheless it is a great deal to convince the patient that he is sure of recovery, and that nobody less than a god has dictated the remedies.  The value of mental therapeutics is keenly appreciated.  Attached to the temple are skilled physicians to “interpret” the dream, and opportunities for prolonged residence with treatment by baths, purgation, dieting, mineral waters, sea baths, all kinds of mild gymnastics, etc.