Greek Medicine in Rome: The Fitzpatrick Lectures on the History of Medicine Delivered at the Royal College of Physicians of London in 1909-1910; With Other Historical Essays (Classic Reprint) - Tapa blanda

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Excerpt from Greek Medicine in Rome: The Fitzpatrick Lectures on the History of Medicine Delivered at the Royal College of Physicians of London in 1909-1910; With Other Historical Essays

No doubt there is a temptation to make too much of ancient and inchoate notions not only to interpret them in the light of modern opinions but also to remodel them on modern patterns, and to read into them notions then undiscernible. Against such colorable renderings we are well warned if not always well guarded but we hear less of the converse error, one which has done injustice to our forefathers, the error of dissipating an ancient idea almost to evanescence by too vivid a use of the modern searchlight. Schultz has well said of the relics of the Ionians, as also of the arts of the fourteenth century, that at first they seem almost absurd; yet as we study them we begin to realise the value of their intent and content. Not at first explicit, they need precipitation from their solutions.

For action, and this is the function of mankind, some system of dogma has always been a necessary support; some scaffold ing of an empirical philosophy must come before science. Things have to be done that will not wait. We have to outbuild our materials - gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble each perhaps having its provisional value. The Roman was above all things, a man of action; in Rome, even more than elsewhere, ideas became rigid or rhetorical, and outlived their spirit. Then came the inevitable recoil to the scepticism that was born in Greece and in Alexandria; but even the sceptics in their turn secreted a shell no less hard than that of any other sect. The problem of all time and of all people, a problem hitherto unsolved, has been to build doctrine just so far and so firmly as to give an instrument for social and rational purposes, but not so far as to harden into constraint. From a like point of view Dr. Edward Caird has written - that systems of doctrine survive the most violent assaults, and even gain vigour from them what they cannot stand against is being thoroughly understood and appreciated. Then the intelligence goes through and beyond them. The principle is extracted, and goes forth into new forms of life and thought wherein lie new mysteries to attract the spirit of discovery. History tells us that an idea arises, and a sect grows up to work it but no sooner is the form established than a few minds, and then more and more, begin to run from under it, leaving the form to petrify.

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