European Medicine Prior to 500 AD
© Copyright 1985 Revised 2000 Robert Zoller All Rights Reserved
Originally published in the National Council of Geocosmic Research Journal (USA) Winter 1985 -86.
The great light of Greek systematic medicine, Hippocrates, was born around 460 BC. a full 700 years after Egypt began her period of decadence. Yet the Ebers Papyrus, written around 1600 BC., shows that Egyptian physicians of Thebes had achieved a level of medical knowledge which was not duplicated again until the time of Galen, 1500 years later. This same papyrus shows us that the much celebrated Hippocratic Oath was merely a resume of the seven centuries earlier ethical code of the Theban physicians.
Yet Greece in Hippocrates's day was commencing her climb to eminence in the West. To the Greeks, all the peoples surrounding them, especially those to the North and West, were merely 'barbarians." To put the concept of Medical Astrology in context, we must investigate the state of the medical and astronomical sciences among these barbarian peoples.
Two things are required for there to be an "astrological medicine". Firstly, there must be sufficiently advanced astronomical learning on which to construct such an edifice, and secondly there must be a highly evolved medical lore. A third requirement would be a doctrine which holds that the affairs of heaven are in a very real manner conveyed to earth and have effect here.
Now it is interesting that elements of these three requirements did in fact exist in Europe prior to about 500 BC. Apparently, they were not sufficiently codified or systematised to permit the evolution of a medical astrology such as arose later through the meeting of Greek rationalism with Babylonian astral religion. The Indo-European inhabitants of Europe had a religion which emphasised a Sky God, and even went so far as to revere the Sun and the Moon. These pre-Christian inhabitants of Europe did not, however, articulate a doctrine of personal fate related to the heavens such as was developed by the Greco-Babylonian astrologers. The emphasis of life in Europe was on the community and on fertility in earth, man and beast. Their astrology, as such, was overwhelmingly mundane in scope.
It is now generally accepted that Stonehenge and a few other megalithic structures in Europe were used as lunar calendar observatories. It is also recognised that these structures were begun long before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans proper.
Stonehenge, for example, was begun around 2500-3000 BC.It is clear that at an early date some peoples in England, and in various places throughout Europe, had considerable astronomical knowledge, as well as engineering skill. Archaeologists have determined that people of the "Beaker Culture" were responsible for building Stonehenge. Unfortunately this leaves unanswered the question of where and how these people learned these skills.
As with the Egyptian civilisation, the first evidence we have of their high skills exhibits them at peak performance. Hoyle has shown that structures built after Stonehenge (1) were degenerations, rather than refinements, from the astronomical point of view. Possibly from such observatories, and from the priests who staffed them, the later Celts and Germanic peoples learned a good deal of their sky lore. On the other hand, the sky lore of the Germanic peoples at least seems to belong to a common Indo-European body of knowledge relating to the sky. We find various elements of it cropping up in India, Persia, Greece and the British Isles. For example, the Germanic peoples relied heavily on the lunar calendar. We learn from the Romans that the Germans would not fight before the New Moon and that the women of the tribes were the custodians of the method of determining the phase of the Moon. Their assemblies were held on either the New Moon or the Full Moon and they measured time according to a lunar calendar.
At the same time they had knowledge of the solar year and represented both the solar year and the lunar month by an eight-spoke wheel. They also knew of an eight-year cycle (undoubtedly the inferior conjunctions of Venus which form an eight pointed star in the sky every eight years) according to which they ordered sacrifices intended to ensure the healthy and fertile condition of their communities and beasts. It is more difficult to show what they knew about the other planets. References in the Edda can be interpreted to show that they did, but the Edda was recorded in the l3th century. Apparently they knew both the sidereal period ofthe Moon and its synodical period. The eight-fold division of the synodical month was held to be related to the sexual urge, and to crises in fevers. It is astrologically noteworthy that the same glyph used for the eight-year Venus cycle, by the Celts wasalso the Wheel of the Dharma in India.
The sidereal year must have been known, but doesn't seem to have played much of a role in what has come down to us. There is no evidence, so far as I am aware, of any kind of sign division of the ecliptic. The eight-fold division of the lunar month was also employed to determine directions. The Compass Rose is a survivor of this tradition.
The eight-fold division was also felt to be of significance in the process of generation and of the passing away of things. In the north, where the angle of the ecliptic is closer to the horizon, the eight-fold division of time and space works much better than it does in the Mediterranean regions. We can see, then, that the astronomy of the northern Germanic people was fairly sophisticated, although lacking in the knowledge of the planets as we find in Mesopotamia. Still, a rudimentary medical astronomy could have been developed were it not for the lack of the necessary astral philosophy such as arose in Babylon.
Medically, all western men, including the early Romans, preferred simple, empirical medicines found close at hand. Herbs and animal substances with their medical, culinary, magical, and poisoning powers formed the basis of a specifically feminine magic called seithr {Old Norse}.
Indeed, prior to the arrival of systematic, theoretical medicine developed by the Greeks, medicine and magic were in separable in Europe. When one fell ill a family member would apply time proven folk remedies. Should these fail, the sorcerer was called in. In order to find the causes and cures of the illness, that shamanic figure would employ a combination of herbal medicine, sung charms (like the mantra of the Hindus, or the chanting of the American Indians), and spiritual or magical techniques such as astral projection. Massage was known, making us wonder if there was some kind of bio-energetic lore extant in those days. Hypnosis was also employed in order to enlist the healing powers of the patient's own soul.
Several examples of indigenous European healing methods have come down to us. An example of which may be found in this early Roman prayer:
An example of the Nordic "heathen" medical/magical practices is this charm from a tenth century Old High German manuscript at Merseberg Cathedral, Saxony {present day Germany}.
The efficacy in such charms was supposed to be the remembrance of a divine act, but also in the sound of the words and in the rhythm of the poem. We must assume that the power of the sorcerer also came into it.
A good deal of ancient magical medicine arose from man's observation of animals. The Egyptians tell us that they learned purgatives from observing dogs, who having eaten something which upset their stomach, ate grass and other herbs to induce vomiting. From Hippopotami they learned phlebotomy (bleeding); from the Ibis the use of enemata.
The connection between man and the environment (indeed the whole history and origin of medicine) is embodied in the myth of Aesculapios. Aesculapios (4) was called by Homer, "the blameless physician." According to legend, he was the son of Apollo and Coronis. When Coronis was with child by the god Apollo, she became enamoured of Ischys, an Arcadian. Apollo informed of this by a raven, killed Coronis and lschys. When the body of Coronis was to be burnt, the child Aesculapios was saved from the flames, and was brought up by the centaur Chiron who instructed him in the art of healing and hunting. After he had grown, he not only healed the sick, but recalled the dead back to life. Zeus, fearing lest man might contrive to escape death altogether, killed Aesculapios with a thunderbolt; but on request of Apollo, Zeus placed him among the stars (as the constellation Draco or Ophiuchus, the snake handler).
Aesculapios had married Epione, by whom he had two sons, mentioned by Homer as having been physicians in the Greek Army. He had other children as well. His chief seat of worship was at Epidaurus where he had a Temple surrounded by an extensive grove. Serpents were sacred to him, because they were a symbol of renovation and were believed to have the power of discovering healing herbs.
The story of Chiron's tutelage of Aesculapios in both hunting and healing may remind us of the cave painting in the Pyrennes. There portrayed is an Aurignacian sorcerer dressed in skins and wearing deer antlers as a headdress. He is considered to be the oldest representativeof the healing art, yet aside from healing he is also surrounded by pictures of hunting scenes. Clearly he is both a hunter and a healer. This cave painting is circa 1500 BC but the Aesculapios myth comes from Greece. Both portray the physician as associated withthe power of life and death, and both link him to semi-human forces. Thus we see the interface of medicine and magic once again. Aesculapios is also portrayed with a staff around which is coiled a serpent representing the life force. It was later called in Greece and Rome vis medicatrix naturae - the healing power of nature.
Surgery was also known in ancient "barbarian" Europe. Atkinson (5) observed numerous skulls which show signs of dental and cranial surgery. Many showed that the patient had died prior to healing of the bone wounds, probably under the flint knife. Some, however, were skulls that had been trepanned { a trepan is a cylindrical saw used by surgeons for removing part of the bone of the skull} after the patient had been hit over the head with a club. The operation removed the pressure from the radial fracture and the patient had survived the wound had healed. Apparently the operation had saved his life! The vast majority of these operations were probably done for magico-medical purposes, i.e., to permit an evil spirit which was causing migraines or pain in the head to escape. Perhaps as operation of the last resort!
The picture we get of the state of the medical art is rather like the one we get of the astronomical knowledge. We find considerable competency in certain areas, herbal medicine for instance, and even the ability to trepan a skull. Yet there is little or no systemisation. The herbal knowledge was entirely without theory or organisation. Competency being based on a learnt quantityand rate of success. The methods were arrived at empirically. For quite a while the lists of such herbal remedies which come down to us in the middle ages showed little or no organisation. All this changed with Hippocrates and the physicians afterhim. The empiricism continued, of course, both in Greece and in Europe as a whole. However, the wedding of Philosophy and Medicine, which we may say began with Empedocles (6) and really flowered with Galen, was something essentially different from what had been done before in Europe. Astrological Medicine could only come about when there was a wedding of physics, philosophy and medicine.
There had to be a theoretical structure that made astronomy the line between the events of this world and those of heaven. This was only potentially present in heathen Europe prior to the rise of Greek Philosophy in the 5th century BC.
Notes:
Originally published in the National Council of Geocosmic Research Journal (USA) Winter 1985 -86.
The great light of Greek systematic medicine, Hippocrates, was born around 460 BC. a full 700 years after Egypt began her period of decadence. Yet the Ebers Papyrus, written around 1600 BC., shows that Egyptian physicians of Thebes had achieved a level of medical knowledge which was not duplicated again until the time of Galen, 1500 years later. This same papyrus shows us that the much celebrated Hippocratic Oath was merely a resume of the seven centuries earlier ethical code of the Theban physicians.
Yet Greece in Hippocrates's day was commencing her climb to eminence in the West. To the Greeks, all the peoples surrounding them, especially those to the North and West, were merely 'barbarians." To put the concept of Medical Astrology in context, we must investigate the state of the medical and astronomical sciences among these barbarian peoples.
Two things are required for there to be an "astrological medicine". Firstly, there must be sufficiently advanced astronomical learning on which to construct such an edifice, and secondly there must be a highly evolved medical lore. A third requirement would be a doctrine which holds that the affairs of heaven are in a very real manner conveyed to earth and have effect here.
Now it is interesting that elements of these three requirements did in fact exist in Europe prior to about 500 BC. Apparently, they were not sufficiently codified or systematised to permit the evolution of a medical astrology such as arose later through the meeting of Greek rationalism with Babylonian astral religion. The Indo-European inhabitants of Europe had a religion which emphasised a Sky God, and even went so far as to revere the Sun and the Moon. These pre-Christian inhabitants of Europe did not, however, articulate a doctrine of personal fate related to the heavens such as was developed by the Greco-Babylonian astrologers. The emphasis of life in Europe was on the community and on fertility in earth, man and beast. Their astrology, as such, was overwhelmingly mundane in scope.
It is now generally accepted that Stonehenge and a few other megalithic structures in Europe were used as lunar calendar observatories. It is also recognised that these structures were begun long before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans proper.
Stonehenge, for example, was begun around 2500-3000 BC.It is clear that at an early date some peoples in England, and in various places throughout Europe, had considerable astronomical knowledge, as well as engineering skill. Archaeologists have determined that people of the "Beaker Culture" were responsible for building Stonehenge. Unfortunately this leaves unanswered the question of where and how these people learned these skills.
As with the Egyptian civilisation, the first evidence we have of their high skills exhibits them at peak performance. Hoyle has shown that structures built after Stonehenge (1) were degenerations, rather than refinements, from the astronomical point of view. Possibly from such observatories, and from the priests who staffed them, the later Celts and Germanic peoples learned a good deal of their sky lore. On the other hand, the sky lore of the Germanic peoples at least seems to belong to a common Indo-European body of knowledge relating to the sky. We find various elements of it cropping up in India, Persia, Greece and the British Isles. For example, the Germanic peoples relied heavily on the lunar calendar. We learn from the Romans that the Germans would not fight before the New Moon and that the women of the tribes were the custodians of the method of determining the phase of the Moon. Their assemblies were held on either the New Moon or the Full Moon and they measured time according to a lunar calendar.
At the same time they had knowledge of the solar year and represented both the solar year and the lunar month by an eight-spoke wheel. They also knew of an eight-year cycle (undoubtedly the inferior conjunctions of Venus which form an eight pointed star in the sky every eight years) according to which they ordered sacrifices intended to ensure the healthy and fertile condition of their communities and beasts. It is more difficult to show what they knew about the other planets. References in the Edda can be interpreted to show that they did, but the Edda was recorded in the l3th century. Apparently they knew both the sidereal period ofthe Moon and its synodical period. The eight-fold division of the synodical month was held to be related to the sexual urge, and to crises in fevers. It is astrologically noteworthy that the same glyph used for the eight-year Venus cycle, by the Celts wasalso the Wheel of the Dharma in India.
The sidereal year must have been known, but doesn't seem to have played much of a role in what has come down to us. There is no evidence, so far as I am aware, of any kind of sign division of the ecliptic. The eight-fold division of the lunar month was also employed to determine directions. The Compass Rose is a survivor of this tradition.
The eight-fold division was also felt to be of significance in the process of generation and of the passing away of things. In the north, where the angle of the ecliptic is closer to the horizon, the eight-fold division of time and space works much better than it does in the Mediterranean regions. We can see, then, that the astronomy of the northern Germanic people was fairly sophisticated, although lacking in the knowledge of the planets as we find in Mesopotamia. Still, a rudimentary medical astronomy could have been developed were it not for the lack of the necessary astral philosophy such as arose in Babylon.
Medically, all western men, including the early Romans, preferred simple, empirical medicines found close at hand. Herbs and animal substances with their medical, culinary, magical, and poisoning powers formed the basis of a specifically feminine magic called seithr {Old Norse}.
Indeed, prior to the arrival of systematic, theoretical medicine developed by the Greeks, medicine and magic were in separable in Europe. When one fell ill a family member would apply time proven folk remedies. Should these fail, the sorcerer was called in. In order to find the causes and cures of the illness, that shamanic figure would employ a combination of herbal medicine, sung charms (like the mantra of the Hindus, or the chanting of the American Indians), and spiritual or magical techniques such as astral projection. Massage was known, making us wonder if there was some kind of bio-energetic lore extant in those days. Hypnosis was also employed in order to enlist the healing powers of the patient's own soul.
Several examples of indigenous European healing methods have come down to us. An example of which may be found in this early Roman prayer:
- Father Mars, I entreat and beg you...to keep at bay, repulse
and take away disease, known and arcane...and to give
health to me, my house and my household." (2)
An example of the Nordic "heathen" medical/magical practices is this charm from a tenth century Old High German manuscript at Merseberg Cathedral, Saxony {present day Germany}.
Phol (Balder) and Woden
fared to a wood;
there was Balder's
foal's foot sprained.
---------------------
then charmed Woden
as well he knew how
for bone sprain
for blood sprain
for limb sprain.
Bone to bone
blood to blood
limb to limbs
as though they were glued. (3)
The efficacy in such charms was supposed to be the remembrance of a divine act, but also in the sound of the words and in the rhythm of the poem. We must assume that the power of the sorcerer also came into it.
A good deal of ancient magical medicine arose from man's observation of animals. The Egyptians tell us that they learned purgatives from observing dogs, who having eaten something which upset their stomach, ate grass and other herbs to induce vomiting. From Hippopotami they learned phlebotomy (bleeding); from the Ibis the use of enemata.
The connection between man and the environment (indeed the whole history and origin of medicine) is embodied in the myth of Aesculapios. Aesculapios (4) was called by Homer, "the blameless physician." According to legend, he was the son of Apollo and Coronis. When Coronis was with child by the god Apollo, she became enamoured of Ischys, an Arcadian. Apollo informed of this by a raven, killed Coronis and lschys. When the body of Coronis was to be burnt, the child Aesculapios was saved from the flames, and was brought up by the centaur Chiron who instructed him in the art of healing and hunting. After he had grown, he not only healed the sick, but recalled the dead back to life. Zeus, fearing lest man might contrive to escape death altogether, killed Aesculapios with a thunderbolt; but on request of Apollo, Zeus placed him among the stars (as the constellation Draco or Ophiuchus, the snake handler).
Aesculapios had married Epione, by whom he had two sons, mentioned by Homer as having been physicians in the Greek Army. He had other children as well. His chief seat of worship was at Epidaurus where he had a Temple surrounded by an extensive grove. Serpents were sacred to him, because they were a symbol of renovation and were believed to have the power of discovering healing herbs.
The story of Chiron's tutelage of Aesculapios in both hunting and healing may remind us of the cave painting in the Pyrennes. There portrayed is an Aurignacian sorcerer dressed in skins and wearing deer antlers as a headdress. He is considered to be the oldest representativeof the healing art, yet aside from healing he is also surrounded by pictures of hunting scenes. Clearly he is both a hunter and a healer. This cave painting is circa 1500 BC but the Aesculapios myth comes from Greece. Both portray the physician as associated withthe power of life and death, and both link him to semi-human forces. Thus we see the interface of medicine and magic once again. Aesculapios is also portrayed with a staff around which is coiled a serpent representing the life force. It was later called in Greece and Rome vis medicatrix naturae - the healing power of nature.
Surgery was also known in ancient "barbarian" Europe. Atkinson (5) observed numerous skulls which show signs of dental and cranial surgery. Many showed that the patient had died prior to healing of the bone wounds, probably under the flint knife. Some, however, were skulls that had been trepanned { a trepan is a cylindrical saw used by surgeons for removing part of the bone of the skull} after the patient had been hit over the head with a club. The operation removed the pressure from the radial fracture and the patient had survived the wound had healed. Apparently the operation had saved his life! The vast majority of these operations were probably done for magico-medical purposes, i.e., to permit an evil spirit which was causing migraines or pain in the head to escape. Perhaps as operation of the last resort!
The picture we get of the state of the medical art is rather like the one we get of the astronomical knowledge. We find considerable competency in certain areas, herbal medicine for instance, and even the ability to trepan a skull. Yet there is little or no systemisation. The herbal knowledge was entirely without theory or organisation. Competency being based on a learnt quantityand rate of success. The methods were arrived at empirically. For quite a while the lists of such herbal remedies which come down to us in the middle ages showed little or no organisation. All this changed with Hippocrates and the physicians afterhim. The empiricism continued, of course, both in Greece and in Europe as a whole. However, the wedding of Philosophy and Medicine, which we may say began with Empedocles (6) and really flowered with Galen, was something essentially different from what had been done before in Europe. Astrological Medicine could only come about when there was a wedding of physics, philosophy and medicine.
There had to be a theoretical structure that made astronomy the line between the events of this world and those of heaven. This was only potentially present in heathen Europe prior to the rise of Greek Philosophy in the 5th century BC.
Notes:
- Hoyle, Fred, On Stonehenge, Freeman, W.H. & Co.., San Francisco, 1977, pp. 32, 113.
- Scarborough, John Roman Medicine,, Cornell University. Press, Ithaca, N.Y., p.16 et seq.
- Singer, Charles, Early English Magic and Medicine, " Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. IX.
- Harper's Dictionary of Classical Literature and Antiquities, Harry Thurston Peck (editor),., American Book Company, 1923.
- Atkinson, Donald T. Myth, Magic and Medicine, World Publishing Co.., Cleveland and N.Y., 1956, pp. 15-18.
- Empedocles, c. 495-435 BC. philosopher, physician, musician and scientist.