Medicine

med'i-sin, a substance used as a remedy for disease; also a study of remedies. Scientific medicine is thought to have taken its rise in Egypt. Papyrus records found at Thebes, thought to be of great antiquity, possibly 7,000 years, name 400 diseases and 700 remedies. Many ridiculous remedies are of record. As late as 1620 a powder of mummy dust and dried rhubarb was regarded as a remedy for epilepsy; human fat for rheumatism; ear-wax for defective eyesight, and the liver of a lizard for toothache.

Various theories of medicine have been and still are prevalent. The Galenists recommend vegetable remedies. The Arabs were Galenists. They introduced rhubarb, cassia, senna, and camphor to the knowledge of western Europe. The use of sarsaparilla for purifying the blood is in accordance with the Galenic idea. The housewife, with her old-fashioned bundles of dried herbs, as sage, pennyroyal, and boneset, is a genuine Galenist. Decoctions of sassafras and slippery elm bark are of this nature. We import from $15,000,000 to $20,000,000 worth of medicinal plants and vegetable drugs annually.

The chemical school, on the other hand, held that mineral remedies were the more effective. Many of the mineral remedies, as mercury and strychnine, are dangerous poisons and must be taken in minute doses. An extreme view of the chemical school was that diseases are either acid or alkaline in their nature. An acid disease is to be cured by the administering of an alkali; an alkaline disease by the administering of an acid. At the present day, it is unnecessary to say, physicians prescribe both vegetable and chemical remedies. Other remedies, as cod liver oil, are of animal origin. Materia Medica, is a general term for the various remedies known to the physician.

See Aesculapius; Avicenna; Hippocrates; Galen; Harvey; Jenner; Hahnemann; Finsen; Pasteur; Drugs; Surgery; Alchemy; Disease; Sarsaparilla; Arnica; Asafoetida; Boneset; Sage; Quinine; Poison, etc.