Is there such a thing as "secular medicine"? - Part 2

[Continued from part 1]
Early Religion and Medicine Inseparable
Nutton further notes the religious ties of classical secular medicine:

The relationship between religious and secular healing, and between their practitioners, is far too complex to fit a neat opposition between religion and medicine …[1]

In other words, the boundary between the two, if one existed, is nearly impossible to delineate. Nutton then makes the following comment, no doubt reflected in the Hippocratic Oath, joining this tactic of Satan with so-called secular medicine:

… Asclepius came to symbolise not just the power of the gods to heal and save but also the art of medicine itself as contrasted with other healing alternatives. Asclepius possessed the skills, talents and attributes of the good human doctor. For a doctor to reject Asclepius and his healings might also be for him to reject the very things for which medicine was thought to stand. In this way religious and secular healing reinforced rather than opposed each other.[2]

What we see in these comments is that so-called secular or Hippocratic medicine remained very tied up with the cult of Asclepius most notably, as well as other pagan religious beliefs, in part due to the belief that Hippocrates (c.460-c.370 BC) was a descendent of Asclepius,[3] but also because of the long history of medicine as an integral part of pagan religion. Jayne tells us that the serpent symbolized Asclepius himself,[4] so it can readily be seen, then, why the rod of Asclepius with the single serpent is a symbol of his power to heal and the apparent character of his healing work, and why it has carried over to this day. The rod of Asclepius represents in a single symbol the essence of the Hippocratic Oath, the essence of medicine which is so very important to our modern concept of medicine – one might call it the soul of Western medicine – which is firmly rooted in the cult of Asclepius.
Furthermore, some ancient sources claim that Hippocrates borrowed his cures from the testimonies inscribed on the walls of the temple of Asclepius at Cos, which were quite amazing to any reader. One example is the testimony of a man who went to a temple of Asclepius with one eye and left with two, the god having applied an ointment of some sort to his eye socket while he slept in the temple – a part of a broader ritual called incubation.[5] Hippocrates looked for patterns of working, just as the Greek philosophers looked for laws of Nature – procedures that could be repeated outside the healing temples.[6] He is considered the first major practitioner of secularized medicine, yet, seeing the above, how secular was it in reality?
Galen (129-c.200 or 216 AD), who influenced Western medicine for about 1600 years or more, is reported to have been called into the study of medicine by Asclepius when he appeared in a dream to Galen’s father Nicon.[7] Later, as Galen – “an avowed ‘worshipper of Asclepius’” – pursued medicine, Asclepius appeared to him on occasion in dreams, and Galen reportedly corrected his notes according to the counsel of Asclepius in his dreams.[8]
This is all well and good, but we tend to think of Greek and Roman mythology as quaint stories or fables, and we forget that this was the polytheistic religion of the Greeks and Romans. The works of mythology were their equivalent of our Old Testament, at least to some degree – these works are the history of their gods and their beliefs. As Paul said, even though we know these gods are nothing, there are demons who work behind the scenes.[9] As I said earlier, the “god of this world” is seeking to keep people away from Jesus, the only true Savior and mediator between God and men. We dare not take lightly these associations with pagan gods, which is in reality occult.
The Eye of Horus
One last symbol I want to address is the Rx symbol found on pharmacies and on prescription pads. It is often referred to as the eye of Horus or at least derived from it.[10] Horus was an Egyptian healing god. Walter Jayne says the following, which may have influenced the thinking of early practitioners:

All the people wore about the neck amulets, charms, and talismans of stone or knots of cloth on which magic words of power had been inscribed, or over which priests had recited magic texts, the ‘eye of Horus,’ ‘the intact eye’ (uzait), which gave health and soundness of sight, being the most popular protection against illness.[11]

Günther Eichhorn adds the following explanation as to how this symbol may have carried over to the present day:

The Eye of Horus was believed to have healing and protective power, and it was used as a protective amulet, and as a medical measuring device, using the mathematical proportions of the eye[12] to determine the proportions of ingredients in medical preparations. … The Egyptians did write prescriptions. Those prescriptions were first magical verses, and then the real prescription. The Eye of Horus was an important part of the magical part of the prescription. With time the magical part became smaller, and the real prescription more important. Eventually, all that was left of the magical verse was the Eye of Horus. It remained in prescriptions to this day as the R at the beginning of each prescription …[13]

Medicine, the gods and magic
Add to all this these words of Eusebius (c.263-c.339 AD) which refer to another Egyptian god of healing, one of the most ancient of Egyptian gods, Apis:

The healing art is said to have been invented by Apis the Egyptian . . . and afterwards improved by Aesculapius.[14]

In other words, Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea of Palaestina and referred to as the “Father of Church History,” is saying that one of the most ancient men of Egypt and one of early Greece, both deified after their deaths to become healing gods of their peoples and both thoroughly pagan, were what one might call the fathers of the healing arts of the West. Add to this that Jayne, in his book The Healing Gods of Ancient Civilizations, says all the healing arts were completely entwined with their gods and some form of magic or similar occult practice. Only of ancient Babylon and Assyria does he say there might have been some form of what we might call secular medicine which was considered less effective than the healing provided in their temples, and those physicians were “held in comparatively small esteem” compared to the priests.[15] This comment regarding medicine in ancient Egypt typifies this belief in the ancient world:

Remedies without magic were valueless or failed of their full effect ... Healing had developed with magic, it was inseparably connected with it, and all evidence indicates that it was never emancipated from it.[16]

As I began reading Jayne’s work, I thought to myself that surely some medical care was performed apart from the gods and magic, such as setting broken bones. As it turns out, there were incantations for even this type of medical care. Jayne provides no evidence of any accompanying manipulation of the bones such as setting the bones as practiced today.
Recently, I saw a program on the History Channel regarding what archeologists now believe about the work force of ancient Egypt that built the pyramids. They were not slaves but more of a union-style workforce that was well cared for. The program made a special point of the quality of medical care received by showing the leg bone of a worker’s mummified remains. The leg had evidently been broken, and a purported expert indicated surprise at the high level of medical care for the period in the handling of this leg injury. The medical treatment for a broken bone in ancient Egypt was an incantation. Could this be an indication that this practice was perhaps efficacious?[17] If not, their knowledge of dealing with this injury surprised the researchers.
[Continued in part 3]

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[1] Nutton, p. 103.
[2] Ibid., p. 114 – emphasis added.
[3] Ibid., p. 56 – Nutton cites a passage in Plato’s Protagoras as the authority of this claim.
[4] Jayne, Walter Addison, M.D., The Healing Gods of Ancient Civilizations, (New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, Inc., 1962, originally published 1925), p. 242.
[5] Ibid., p. 230.
[6] Temkin, p. 54, is somewhat suspicious of this claim, yet admits it is an open question. Nutton claims this is “demonstrably false” (Nutton, p. 61), yet I had trouble following her references to support this claim. In fact, in the very next sentence, she states that Galen believed Hippocrates recorded “at least part of the collection … to preserve the oral doctrines of the family of Asclepiads that were in danger of disappearing because they were handed down only by word of mouth.” In any case, I find it hard to believe that Hippocrates was able to ignore completely his pagan background and start from scratch. She clearly has somewhat of a secularized bias as a general tone of her work.
[7] Nutton, p. 217.
[8] Ibid., p. 279.
[9] 1 Corinthians 10:20-21.
[10] Jayne, p. vi, see also http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/e/eye_of_horus.html.
[11] Ibid., pp. 40-41.
[12] For these mathematical properties, see Wikipedia – Eye of Horus.
[13] Eichhorn, Günther, “Ancient Egyptian Symbols” from http://gei.aerobaticsweb.org/egypt_symbols.html noted on July 26, 2008 – emphasis added.
[14] Eusebius of Caesarea, Preparatio Evangelica (Preparation for the Gospel), Tr. E. H. Gifford (1093), Book X, VI, 26. See this link for the text. Note that “Aesculapius” is the Roman form of the Greek Asclepius.
[15] Jayne, p. 104.
[16] Ibid., p. 45.
[17] I can’t find a reference for this particular program. If any of my readers saw it and can help me with this, I would appreciate it.