[Read in Section of State Medicine and Hygiene of the American Medical Association, May 1884 ]
We are now in the age of pride and the Niobe of nations. But when we look back even to the dark age of the Egyptians, we find that our sanitary measures are far behind any other advancements of modern civilization.
Hygeia, commonly called the goddess of health, and from which the term hygiene has its etymology, was a pretender, as well as her father Esculapius,who styled himself the god of medicine.
But when we look back beyond the days of those pretenders, we find that nations lived hundreds of years before them, whose literature was ever preserved by a nation which has preserved itself and survived nations of ordinary power.
When the Egyptians strove amongst themselves, their literature was destroyed, and the loss of the library of Alexandria is felt at the present