THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN MEDICINE
A SERIES OF LECTURES DELIVERED AT YALE UNIVERSITY
ON THE SILLIMAN FOUNDATION
IN APRIL, 1913
by William Osler
THE SILLIMAN FOUNDATION
IN the year 1883 a legacy of eighty thousand dollars was left to the President and Fellows of Yale College in the city of New Haven, to be held in trust, as a gift from her children, in memory of their beloved and honored mother, Mrs. Hepsa Ely Silliman.
On this foundation Yale College was requested and directed to establish an annual course of lectures designed to illustrate the presence and providence, the wisdom and goodness of God, as manifested in the natural and moral world. These were to be designated as the Mrs. Hepsa Ely Silliman Memorial Lectures. It was the belief of the testator that any orderly presentation of the facts of nature or history contributed to the end of this foundation more effectively than any attempt to emphasize the elements of doctrine or of creed; and he therefore provided that lectures on dogmatic or polemical theology should be excluded from the scope of this foundation, and that the subjects should be selected rather from the domains of natural science and history, giving special prominence to astronomy, chemistry, geology and anatomy.
It was further directed that each annual course should be made the basis of a volume to form part of a series constituting a memorial to Mrs. Silliman. The memorial fund came into the possession of the Corporation of Yale University in the year 1901; and the present volume constitutes the tenth of the series of memorial lectures.
CONTENTS
THE SILLIMAN FOUNDATION
PREFACE
CHAPTER I — ORIGIN OF MEDICINE
INTRODUCTION
ORIGIN OF MEDICINE
EGYPTIAN MEDICINE
ASSYRIAN AND BABYLONIAN MEDICINE
HEBREW MEDICINE
CHINESE AND JAPANESE MEDICINE
CHAPTER II — GREEK MEDICINE
ASKLEPIOS
HIPPOCRATES AND THE HIPPOCRATIC WRITINGS
ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL
GALEN
CHAPTER III — MEDIAEVAL MEDICINE
SOUTH ITALIAN SCHOOL
BYZANTINE MEDICINE
ARABIAN MEDICINE
THE RISE OF THE UNIVERSITIES
MEDIAEVAL MEDICAL STUDIES