Medicine unquestionably ranks among the most ancient of all human sciences. In the infant state of society, when simplicity of manners characterised the pursuits of mankind, medical assistance was little wanted; but when the nature of man degenerated, and vice and luxury corrupted his habits of innocence and temperance, diseases sprung up which those aids alone could check or eradicate. The knowledge of them at first could not fail to be empirical and precarious. The sick were placed in the high ways, that travellers and passers by might assist them with their counsel; and at length the priesthood appropriated this privilege exclusively to themselves.

It was not merely the sacerdotal dignity which rendered them objects of awe and reverence to the illiterate multitude; the priests were regarded as the depositaries of science and learning; and proved themselves as skilful as they were successful, in cementing their influence by those arts which were best calculated to inflame the prejudices of the vulgar in their favour.

It is the work of ages to wean men and nations from popular illusions, and the deep-rooted opinions transmitted from sire to son: it cannot therefore surprise us, that even when the intellectual energy of Greece was signalizing itself by efforts which have commanded the admiration of after ages, it should still remain a popular dogma in medicine "that persons labouring under bodily infirmity, might be thrown into a state of charmed torpor, in which, though destitute of any previous medical knowledge, they would be enabled to ascertain the nature of their malady, as well as of the diseases of others, and devise the means of their cure." Upon this dogma was founded the mystery of incubations, or the art of healing by visionary divination.

It is not our object here to discuss whether a man can be capable of divination: such a power, however, was assigned to him, not only by the vulgar, but by the greater number of the philosophical sects of antiquity; and it does appear to savour a little of temerity, that Epicurus and the cynics should have ventured to reject a belief so universally and strenuously maintained, and resting on an infinity of traditions and accounts of prophets, in whom Greece had abounded from her earliest times, and of whose divine gift of prophecy the firmest conviction was currently entertained. Aeschylus, Plutarch, Apuleius, and other Greek authors, bear ample testimony of this persuasion, and tell us that by uncommon and irregular motions of the body intoxicating vapours, or certain holy ejaculations, men might be thrown into an enchanted trance; in which, being in a state between sleeping and waking, they were unsusceptible of external impressions and obtaining a glimpse of futurity, were gifted with the power of prophecy. Here their allusion, however, only concerns the celebrated divinations of the Pythia.[89] We must therefore, probe somewhat deeper, in order to illustrate that species of divination which was the result of dreams, and a source of divination on the nature of diseases and their remedies.

This kind of superstition was in no less acceptation than the former among the ancients, whose temples were constantly crowded with the sick, and reverberated with their supplications for divinatory dreams, which were regarded as an immediate gift from the gods. Indeed, the celestial origin of dreams was universally admitted by the nations of antiquity, and thence also their efficacy as oracles. Nothing could be more natural than such an idea. From the crude and imperfect notions which long prevailed with respect to the soul, it was scarcely possible for them to ascribe the impressions, which their memory retained of the creation of their fancy during their slumbers, to the instrumentality of their own conceits; they could not fail therefore to impute them to the interposition of some foreign agent, and to whom more naturally could they refer them than to a divinity? When awake, they imagined themselves always attended by the gods in person, and ascribed every thought, and resolved every appearance or accident, which deviated from the common course of nature, to the immediate influence of a superintending deity. It was under such impressions that so many nations originally rested their belief in divinatory dreams. The records of antiquity therefore abound in instances (for the greater part of an early date) where the actions of men have been the result of a dream, whose conceit was entirely at variance with the real state of their affairs. It was not long before the diversity of dreams awakened their attention: some were connected and simple, others were obscure, and made up of curious fancies, though not incapable of being resolved by the windings and turnings of allegory.

It was no unnatural transition from the received belief in dreams, to the idea that they might become the medium of seeking instruction from the gods: hence the institution of oracles, whose responses were given in dreams; and the addition of sleeping chambers to many temples, such as those in Epidaurus and at Oropos. Here it was, that after pious ceremonies and prayers, men laid themselves down in expectation of dreams; when the expectation was realized, though the dream proved ever so confused or intricate, the dreamer always succeeded in reconciling it to his circumstances: his own belief and priestly wiles, readily effected the solution. The conceit of dreams, according to the votary's wishes, was so powerfully promoted by the preparatory initiation he had undergone, that it would have been somewhat extraordinary had he been altogether disappointed. He was generally anxious to increase the fame of his divinity by his dream, and possessed a high veneration and deep impression of the miracles which that divinity had wrought. With these predispositions he resorted to the temple, where he had a whole day before him to ponder on his malady, and on every sort of remedy that might have been suggested to him; how natural was it, therefore, for his busy imagination to fix, in his sleep, upon one particular remedy more forcibly than upon another? Add to this, the solemn lonely hour of night was the appointed hour for his sleep, which was preceded by prayer and other inspiring ceremonies, that would naturally elevate his devotion to the highest pitch. He had also previously perambulated the temple, and with a full heart surveyed the offerings of those whose sickness had departed from them.

If all these preparations were unavailing, the officiants of the temple had still means in reserve, by which the credulous should be thrown into that bodily state which was indispensable to the divinatory sleep: of these, succeeding instances will be hereafter produced. In those days, there were however, some men from whom the somniferous faculty was withheld: they were, therefore, admonished to repeat their prayers and oblations, in order to win the divinity's favour: and the ultimate and customary resort was, if success did not crown his perseverance, to pronounce it a token, that such patients were an eyesore to the divinity.

From this divinatory sleep, arose the vulgar expressions in Greece [Greek: enkoimasdai], and [Greek: enkoimaesis][90] The latin terms are incubare and incubatio an exact translation of the Greek words. It appears, therefore, that the Romans and Greeks were equally acquainted with the institution; though we find but very little mention made of it by the Latin writers, yet this is no argument against its prevalence among the Romans, as we are left with as scanty accounts of many other superstitions which were in vogue amongst them. It is highly probable that it was not by any means so popular in Rome as in Greece; and the cause of this may, perhaps, be found in the reflecting disposition and sober character of the haughty Roman, to which the light and volatile temperament of the Grecian, formed so striking a contrast.

That incubation was a ready means of diving into the future, needs no demonstration. Although its practice was chiefly resorted to in cases where medical aid was desired, it was still made use of in every other case, in which the ancient oracles were consulted. Whether it arose in Greece, or migrated thither from the East, is a point with which the ancients have left us unacquainted, though they advert to its prevalence amongst those who were called barbarians. Strabo has several instances of it, and particularly mentions a place in the Caspian sea, where such an oracle existed;[91] he also relates, in his celebrated account of Moses, that this law-giver laid it down, in common with the priests of Esculapius, that to those who led a chaste and virtuous life the deity would vouchsafe prophetical visions in his sanctuary; but to those who were of idle and impure habits, they would be denied.[92]

Pomponius Mela even mentions a savage nation, in the interior of Africa, who laid themselves down to sleep on the grave-stones of their ancestors, and looked upon the dreams they had on those spots as oracles from the dead.[93] We shall see, hereafter, that this superstition was equally indigenous among the Egyptians. Although it be doubtful whether the Greeks owed this species of divination to their own invention or not, its existence may at least be traced as far as the earliest ages of their history; notwithstanding no positive mention of it has been made either by Homer or the authors following him.

The oracular power of dreams, and the sanctuaries where they are supposed to be dispersed, have been diffusely treated of in the compilations of Van Dale and other learned writers. These species of oracles were in high estimation, even in the most enlightened and flourishing periods of Greece; it is somewhat singular, however, that no people cherished them more devoutly than the Spartans, who depended altogether upon oracles in their weightiest affairs of state. Of all the civilized nations of Greece, Sparta always approved herself the most superstitious; her advancement was rather the effect of her policy, than of any stimulus given to her civilization by science. This consideration will enable us to account for the powerful influence which, even in the latest stages of Lacedemonian story, attached to the responses of Passiphae, a local goddess of Thalame, but little known beyond the confines of Laconia. The extent of their influence is particularly evident in the history of Agis and Cleomenes.[94]

The greater part of these somnambulistic oracles were ascribed to persons who had distinguished themselves as great dreamers when on earth. In old times there was a description of prophets who pretended to prepare themselves for the foreboding of future events through the medium of sacred dreams. They were classed under the appellation of [Greek: Oneiroploi], to which rank the most celebrated Vates of the heroic age belonged. In this way it was that a sacred spot was dedicated to Calchus, whence he gave his responses in dreams after his decease: this spot lay in Daunia, on the coast of the Adriatic. The supplicant's offices began with the offering up of a ram, on whose skin he laid himself down, and in this situation, received the instruction he sought for.[95] Amphilocus, a contemporary soothsayer, who accompanied the Epigoni in the first Theban war, had a similar oracle at Mallos, in Cilicia, which Pausanias asserts, even at the close of the second century, to have been the most credible of his age; it is also mentioned by Dion Cassius, in his history of Commodus.[96]

The most famous, however, of this class of oracles, was that of Amphiaraus, the father of Amphilocus, which was one of the five principal oracles of Greece; he had signalized himself as a sapient soothsayer in the first Theban war; and his oracle was situated at Oropos, on the borders of Boetia and Attica. Of all others this deserves our most particular attention, as it was resorted to more frequently in cases of infirmity and disease, than in any other circumstances. His responses were always delivered in dreams, in whose interpretation, as he was the first to possess that faculty. Pausanias says he received divine honours. Those who repaired to Amphiaraus's oracle to supplicate his aid, laid themselves down in the manner we have just related, after several preparatory lustrations and sacrifices, on the skin of a ram slain in honour of the god, and awaited the dreams, which were to unfold the means of their different cures.

Lustrations and sacrifices were not, however, the only preparatives for inducing the visionary disposition. The priests subjected the patients to various others, which Philostratus affirms[97] to have been very instrumental towards rendering the sleeper's mind clear and unclouded. Part of these preparatives consisted in one day's abstinence from eating, and three, nay, even in some cases, fifteen days' abstinence from wine, the common beverage of the Greeks. This was the practice also with other oracles; nor were the priests in the meantime insensible to their own interests on these occasions; for those who were cured by Amphiaraus's revelations were permitted to bathe in the sacred waters of a fountain, into which they were enjoined to cast pieces of gold and silver, which were destined, most probably, to sweeten the labours of his officiants.

The oracles, whose intervention was principally or altogether sought for the healing of the sick by means of divination founded on dreams, were scattered over Greece, Italy, Egypt, and other countries. As regards those of Egypt, it may be remarked, that although many of the Egyptians believed there were thirty-six demons, or aerial deities, each of whom had the care of a certain portion of the human frame, and when that portion was diseased, would heal it on the patient's earnest prayer, yet a variety of their oracles, such as those of Serapis, Isis, and 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.[98] 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,[99] 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.[100]

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,[101] which is mentioned by Lycophron.[102] Subsequently it is well known incubation was practised after the Grecian form in the Roman temple of Aesculapius on the Insula Tiberina.[103]

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, 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.[104] 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 Aesculapius but casually, though there was no god of antiquity more celebrated for curing every species of malady by the incubatory process. He was particularly designated by the Greeks as "the sender of dreams," [Greek: Oneiropompon]; nor could any other deity boast of so great a number of those oracles. 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 tabulae votivae 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 Triccae, 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,[105] where we must look for the scene of the ridiculous cure which Aristophanes makes Aesculapius 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 priests, who enacted the nocturnal apparition of Aesculapius to his sick client.

This passage in Plutus is certainly the earliest circumstantial relation we possess of the practice of this species of incubation.[106] 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 Aesculapius 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 Aesculapius, 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 superstitious 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.

If at this period the number of dreaming patients had fallen off at Cos and Epidaurus, the deficiency was amply compensated by the growing popularity of Aesculapius's shrines at Rome, Pergamus, Alaea, Mallos, and other places, where the ancient rituals were faithfully preserved. The highest magistrates in the Roman states not only countenanced, but patronised the superstition; Marcus Aurelius, by the friendship with which he honoured the Paphlagonian imposter Alexander, and Caracalla, by the journey he undertook to Pergamus, to obtain the cure of a disease which inflicted him. This Alexander, the Cagliostro of his age, whose memoirs have been handed down to us by Lucian, made shift to father a new species of juggling upon the ancient process of incubation: for he pretends that it was necessary for him to sleep for a night in the sealed scrips which contain the queries he was to have resolved for those who visited his oracle.[107] During this interval he dexterously opened the scrips, and sealed them up again; pretending that the responses which he delivered to the querists in the morning, had been revealed to him by the deity in a dream.

The priests of Aesculapius possessed a never failing source of information on the recipes or votive tablets with which these temples abounded. These were sometimes engraven on pillars, as at Epidaurus; of which Pausanias says there were six remaining in his time, and besides these, one in particular removed from the rest, on which it was recorded that Hippolytus had sacrificed twenty horses, in return for his having been restored to life by him. Five memorials only of this kind have reached the present age. One of them is to be found in the beginning of Galen's fifth book de Compos, medic.: it is taken from the temple of Phthas, near Memphis, and is the least interesting of the whole. Its subject is the use of the Diktamnus, borrowed from Heras of Cappadocia, a medical writer, frequently quoted by Galen. The remaining four are much more important: they were engraven on a marble slab,[108] of later date at Rome, and are thought, with much probability, to have belonged to the Aesculapian temple in the Insula Tiberina. The present translation, in which some errors either of the artist or copyist are rectified, is extracted from the first volume of Gruter's Corp. Inscriptionum. The narrations are perspicuous and laconic.

1. "In these latter days, a certain blind man, by name Caius, had this oracle vouchsafed to him—'that he should draw near to the altar after the manner of one who could see; then walk from right to left, lay the five fingers of his right hand on the altar, then raise up his hand and place it on his eyes.' And behold! the multitude saw the blind man open his eyes, and they rejoiced, such splendid miracles should signalize the reign of our Emperor Antoninus."

2. "To Lucius, who was so wasted away by pains in his side, that all doubted of his recovery, the god gave this response: 'Approach thou the altar; take ashes from it, mix them up with wine and then lay thyself on thy sore side.' And the man recovered, and openly returned thanks to the god amidst the congratulations of the people."

3. "To Julian who spitted blood, and was given over by every one, the god granted this response: 'Draw near, take pine apples from off the altar, and eat them with wine for three days. And the man got well, and came and gave thanks in the presence of the people."

4. "A blind soldier, Valerius Asper by name, received this answer from the god: that he should mix the blood of a white cock with milk, make an eye ointment therewith, and rub his eyes with it for three days. And lo! the blind recovered his sight, and came, and publicly gave thanks to the god."

The success with which the Priests of Aesculapius carried on their impostures, and the popularity which their dexterous management, no less than the vulgar credulity obtained for them, will cease to surprise us on maturer consideration. It could not be a difficult task for them to give the minds of their patients whatever bias was best adapted to their purposes. These credulous beings passed several days and nights in the temple, and their imagination could not fail to be powerfully impressed with what was diligently told them of the prescriptions and cures of Aesculapius; nor to retain during their slumbers many lively impressions of their meditations by day; their priestly nurses too were neither so blind to their own interests, nor so careless of their reputations as to omit the prescribing of such modes of diet and medical remedies as were calculated to appease their patients' sufferings. Besides which, however delusive and empirical their outward ceremonials and bold pretensions might have been, we should remember, that priests, having some acquaintance with the science of medicine, were generally selected to officiate on those spots where the incubitary process[109] was the order of the day. To this acquaintance were added the results of daily experience, and the frequent opportunities which the incessant demands of the infirm upon their skill afforded them of correcting previous errors and improving their practical knowledge: of gradually ascertaining the various kinds and appearances of human disorders; and of digesting such data as would enable them, with the least possible chance of failure, to prescribe the modes of cure and treatment suitable to the various stages and species of the applicant's maladies. With such means, it would have been not a little singular if the priests of Aesculapius had failed in converting the popular veneration to his credit and their own emolument.

FOOTNOTES:

[89] The Priestess of Apollo, by whom he delivered oracles. She was called Pythia from the god himself, who was styled Apollo Pythius, from his slaying the serpent Python. The Priestess was to be a pure virgin. She sat on the covercle or lid of a brazen vessel, mounted on a tripod, and thence, after a violent enthusiasm, she delivered his oracles; i.e. she rehearsed a few ambiguous and obscure verses, which were taken for oracles.

[90] These words are but ill explained by the best Greek Lexicographers. Servius ad Virg., Aen. vii. 88, says: Incubare dicuntur proprie hic, qui dormiunt accipienda responsa. Tertullian de Anima, C. 49, thence calls them Incubatores fanorum.

[91] Lib. XI. p. 108. Paris, fol. 1620.

[92] Ibid. lib. XVI. p. 761.

[93] De situ orbis, lib. I. cap. 1.

[94] Plutarch apud Agis et Cleomen. Cicero (de Div. 1. c. 48) probably alludes to this oracle, when he says, that the Ephori of Sparta were accustomed to sleep in the temple of Pasiphae on state emergencies. There was a similar oracle in the neighbourhood of Thalame, not fur from Aetylum, sacred to Ino.

[95] Strabo, lib. VI. p, 284.

[96] Pausanias, 1, 35.

[97] De vita Apoll. Thyan, 11. 37.

[98] Strabo, lib. xvii. p. 801. Anian. Exped. Alex, vii. 6.

[99] In Egypt lib. I, 25.

[100] Galen de comp. Med. p. Gen v. 2.

[101] 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 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 bandage 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.

[102] Alexand. 1050.

[103] Suet. Claid. c. 28.

[104] Strabo. lib. xiii. Pausan. lib. ii.

[105] Scholia ad Plut. v. 621

[106] Aristoph, Plut act. ii, sc. 6, and iii. sc 2.

[107] Luciani, oper. t. ii. ed Reitzii.

[108] It is often called by antiquaries Tabella Marmorea apud Maffaeos, as it was first preserved in the collection.

[109] It is somewhat singular, that Cicero's treatise on divination, as well as the works of Hippocrates and Galen, should be so destitute of information on the subject of a mode of cure which was of such long standing, and so universally esteemed. From the two last, one should at least have expected something more satisfactory: Cos being the birthplace of the one, and Pergamus of the other.