discoverer of medicine. He is supposed to have taught the medicinal value of the ivy, but it is more likely that he owes his medical reputation to his supposed invention of wine. Some old writers identify him with Noah. Hammon, or Ammon, or Amen, traced to Ham, the second son of Noah, has been honoured as having originated medicine in Egypt. Some attribute the name of sal-ammoniac to the temple of Ammon in the Libyan oasis, on the theory that it was first produced there from the dung of camels. Gum ammoniacum is similarly supposed to have been the gum of a shrub which grew in that locality. Zoroaster, who gave the Persians their religious system, is also counted among the inventors of medicine, perhaps because he was so generally regarded as the discoverer of magic.
Apollo.
Apollo, the reputed god of medicine among the Greeks, was the son of Jupiter and Latona. His divinity became associated with the sun, and his arrows, which often caused sudden death were, according to modern expounders of ancient myths, only the rays of the sun. Many of his attributes were similar to those which the Egyptians credited to Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis, and it is evident that the Egyptian legend was incorporated with that of the early Greeks. Besides being the god of medicine Apollo was the deity of music, poetry, and eloquence, and he was honoured as the inventor of all these arts. He evidently possessed the jealousy of the artist in an abundant degree, for after his musical competition with Pan, Apollo playing the lyre and Pan the flute, when Tmolus, the arbiter,
