He considered that men, animals, and plants are demons punished by banishment, but who, becoming purified, may regain the home of the gods. It is hardly necessary to say that he held the demoniacal possession theory of disease, and treated all complaints by means appropriate to the theory. Anticipating the modern opinions of the bacteriologists, he banished epidemics by building great fires and draining the water from marshy lands. He understood something of the causes of infectious diseases, and in their treatment usurped the province of the gods who had sent them.[354] He believed the embryo was nourished through the navel. We owe to him the terms _amnion_ and _chorion_ (_i.e._, the innermost and outer membranes with which the fœtus is surrounded in the womb). He believed that death was caused by extinction of heat, that expiration arose from the upward motion of the blood, and inspiration from the reverse. He is said to have raised a dead woman to life.[355]
Empedocles believed in the doctrine of re-incarnation. “I well remember,” he says, “the time before I was Empedocles, that I once was a boy, then a girl, a plant, a glittering fish, a bird that cut the air.” To his disciples he said: “By my instructions you shall learn medicines that are powerful to cure disease, and re-animate old age—you shall recall the strength of the dead man, when he has already become the victim of Pluto.”[356] Further speaking of himself, he says: “I am revered by both men and women, who follow me by ten thousands, inquiring the road to boundless wealth, seeking the gift of prophecy, and who would learn the marvellous skill to cure all kinds of diseases.”[357]
THE SCHOOL OF THE PYTHAGOREANS AT CROTONA.
Although in ancient Greece the art of medicine, as we have already shown, was closely connected with the temples, if not actually with religion, its entanglement with philosophy was a scarcely less unfortunate connection, and it was not able to make any real progress till HIPPOCRATES liberated it from both priests and philosophers. 582 years before Christ PYTHAGORAS was born, the ideal hero or saint whom we faintly discern through the mythical haze which has always enveloped him. Philosopher, prophet, wonder-worker, and physician, he gathered into his mind as into a focus the wisdom of the Brahmans, the Persian Magi, the Egyptians, the Phœnicians, the Chaldæans, the Jews, the Arabians, and the Druids of Gaul, amongst whom he had travelled, if we may believe what is reported of him. He may have visited Egypt,[358] at any rate, besides acquainting himself with the countries of the Mediterranean. His authentic history begins with his emigration to Crotona, in South Italy, about the year 529. There he founded a kind of religious brotherhood or ethical-reform society, and “appeared as the revealer of a mode of life calculated to raise his disciples above the level of mankind, and to recommend them to the favour of the gods.”[359] Grote believes that the removal to Crotona was prompted by the desire to study medicine in its famous school, probably combined with the notion of instructing the pupils in his philosophy. He rendered great services to the healing art by insisting on the necessity of a thorough comprehension of the organs, structure, and functions of the body in their normal, healthy condition; this must be conceded, though his visionary philosophy did much to destroy the scientific value of his medical teaching.