Phthas, the Hephaestos of the Greeks, appertained to the class, which is the present object of our inquiry.

The oracle Serapis was situated near Canopus; it was visited with the highest veneration by the wealthiest and most illustrious Egyptians, and contained ample records of miraculous cures which that god had performed on sleepers.* Isis, it is said, effected similar cures in her lifetime, whence it became her office, in her after state of deification, to reveal in dreams the most efficacious remedies to the sick. Indeed the healing powers of this goddess were such, that, as we are told by Diodorus,† the remedies she prescribed never failed of their effect, and that convalescents were daily seen returning from her temple, many of whom had been abandoned as incurable by the physicians.

The third oracle of the sick was consecrated to Phthas, and lay near Memphis, but it is seldom mentioned by the ancients.‡

In Italy there existed two oracles, whose responses were imparted in dreams, before the worship of Esculapius was introduced from Greece. One of them only belongs to this place, that of the physician Podalirus, in Daunia,§ which is mentioned by

*Strabo, lib. xvii. p. 801. Anian. vii. 6.

↑ In Egypt. lib. 1, 25.

Galen de comp. Med. p. Gen v. 2.

Exped. Alex.

§ Podalirius and Machaon, the two sons of Esculapius. The state of medicine at the time of the Trojan war was very imperfect, as we find exemplified by these two acting as surgeons general to the Grecian army. Their simple practice

Lycophron.* Subsequently it is well known incubation was practised after the Grecian form in the Roman temple of Esculapius on the Insula Tiberina.

This description of oracles abounded throughout Greece; the most memorable of which was that on the Asiatic coast, between Trattis and Nyssa, which is more particularly described by Strabo than any other. Not far from the town of Nyssa, says he, there is a place called Charaka, where we find a grove and temple sacred to Pluto and Proserpine,

consisted chiefly in extracting darts or arrows, in staunching blood by some infusion of bitter herbs, and sometimes they added charms or incantations; which seemed to be a poetical way of hinting, that frequently wounds were healed or diseases cured in a manner unaccountable by any known properties they could discover either in the effects of their rude remedies, or in the then known powers of the human body to relieve itself. In Homer's description of the wound which Ulysses, when young, received in his thigh from the tusk of an enraged wild boar, the infusion of blood was stopped by divine incantations and divine songs, and some sort of band-age which must have acted by pressure. If any virtue could have acted as a charm, the very verse that describes the wound might have as good a right to such a claim as any other; but, in what manner the surgeons of ancient Greece, before the discovery of the circulation of the blood, might apply bandages for the purposes here mentioned, is not easily explained; though doubtless these bandages must have acted like a tourniquet, which is now the most effectual remedy for compressing a wounded artery, and thereby stopping an hemorrhage.

* Alexand. 1050.

+ Suet. Claid. c. 28.

and close to the grove a subterraneous cave, of a most extraordinary nature. It is related of it, that diseased persons, who have faith in the remedies predicted by those deities, are accustomed to resort to it and pass some time with experienced priests, who reside near the cave. These priests lay themselves down to sleep in the cave, and afterwards order such medicine as have been revealed to them there, to be furnished to their patients in the temple. They frequently conduct the sick themselves into the cave, where they remain for several days together, without touching a morsel of food; nor are the profane withheld from a participation in the divinatory sleep, though this is not permitted otherwise than under the controul, and with the sacred sanction, of the priests. There is, however, nothing more surprising about this place than that it is esteemed noxious and fatal to the healthy.* This last remark of our geographer, proves how jealous the priestly physicians were of their medical monopoly, and how fearful lest the saner part of mankind should detect and expose the pretended virtues of their medical sanctuary.

We have hitherto mentioned the name of Esculapius but casually, though there was no god of antiqnity more celebrated for curing malady by the incubatory process. larly designated by the Greeks as dreams," Ovεрожоμжоν; nor could boast of so great a number of those oracles.

every species of He was particu"the sender of any other deity

*Strabo. lib. xiii. Pausan. lib. ii.

The

most distinguished of these was the oracle of Epidaurus, in the Argivian territory; from which spot his worship extended over a great proportion of the old world ;—hither, as being the place of his birth and the site of his richest temple, crowds of sick persons constantly repaired in quest of dreams. The success attending them was diligently set forth on every wall of the temple; where the tabulæ votivæ recorded the names of those who had been healed, the nature of their maladies, and the cure which the god prescribed. Similar circumstances are related of his Temple at Triccæ, in Thessaly, where Esculapius was held in great veneration at a very early period; there appears also to have been another such temple either at or near Athens,* where we must look for the scene of the ridiculous cure which Aristophanes makes Esculapius to perform on the blind god of riches. Though there is undoubtedly a rich vein of the burlesque in the Plutus of the Grecian dramatist, yet we may gather much concerning our present subject from the scene in which the slave, who had attended Plutus in the Temple, relates the whole process of his master's wife. Here also the night was the chosen period of incubation. Before the signal for sleep was given, the officiants of the temple extinguished all the lights in the sick men's chamber; thus involving them in a solemn stillness and obscurity highly favourable to the work in hand, but in a particular manner to the subterfuge of the

* Scholia ad Plut. v. 621.

priests, who enacted the nocturnal apparition of Esculapius to his sick client.

This passage in Plutus is certainly the earliest circumstantial relation we possess of the practice of this species of incubation.* The license permitted to Grecian comedy was such as to authorise the ridicule and contempt of the most popular deities; we are not, therefore to conclude from the scenes that there were many unbelievers, or that this ancient system of cure had sunk into disrepute for the history of our comedian's great contemporary, Hippocrates, informs us, that at this very time the temple of Esculapius at Cos abounded in tablets, on which the sick attested the remedies that had been revealed to them during incubation, and that he himself was highly indebted to them for much of his medical knowledge.

Were it not authenticated by the most undeniable testimonies, it would appear incredible that the impostures of the disciples of Esculapius, and the common faith in his regenerative powers, should have survived with equal potency and acceptation during the ages immediately succeeding the christian era. It must not however, be forgotten, that these were the times also, when an infinity of superstitions of every description disgraced the Roman world; although it would have appeared a necessary consequence, that their prevalency should have been checked by the increasing determination of learning and science.

*

Aristoph. Plut act. ii. sc. 6. and iii. sc 2.