194 INTERNAL MEDICINE 



by its manipulations, but by its ends. As, because of its ends, the 

 cleansing and solace of the lepers by St. Francis and Father Damien 

 was a service of angels, so Hippocrates saw no baseness even in mani- 

 pulations, which obtained for his followers the name of coprophagi; 

 where there is no overcoming there is no victory. 



Between Hippocrates and Galen, an interval of some five cen- 

 turies, flourished the great anatomical and medical schools of Alex- 

 andria. Our only important source, however, for the medicine of the 

 Alexandrian period is Celsus, who lived in the reign of Augustus. In 

 Celsus we find that the surgical and obstetrical sides of it had made 

 farther and substantial progress. Celsus, perhaps not himself a 

 practitioner, is sometimes vague in detail; still, beyond the Hippo- 

 cratic surgery, we read of treatment in piles, fistula, rodent ulcer, 

 eczema, fractures, and luxations; the nasal passages were cauterized 

 for ozena; dropsies were systematically tapped; hernias were sub- 

 mitted to radical cure; plastic operations were undertaken, and the 

 larger limbs were deliberately amputated, though only in extreme 

 need, and often with fatal results by secondary hemorrhage and 

 otherwise. 



How active surgery was from Celsus to Galen, and how honorable 

 and progressive a part of medicine, we know from the scanty records 

 of Archigenes of Apamea, who also practiced in Rome, in the reign of 

 Trajan. Galen calls him an acute but too subtle a physician; such of 

 his subtleties, however, as are known to us - - his distinction between 

 primary and consequential symptoms for instance - - are to his 

 credit. He applied the ligature in amputations, and Antyllus applied 

 the method to the cure of aneurism, which indeed Rufus seems to 

 have done before him. Galen tells us where he got his "Celtic linen 

 thread" for the purpose, namely, "at a shop in the Via Sacra 

 between the Temple of Rome and the Forum." We learn also, from 

 Oribasius, that Antyllus practiced extensive resections of bone in the 

 limbs, and even in the upper and lower jaw. 



Galen came to Rome under Marcus Aurelius. In the biological 

 sciences this great physician stands to Harvey, as in physics Archi- 

 medes stood to Galileo and to that other great physician, William 

 Gilbert; Galen was the first, as for many centuries he was the last, to 

 apply the experimental method to physiology. He embraced the 

 ancillary sciences, he opened out new routes, and he improved the 

 old. Unhappily, his soaring genius took delight also in speculation ; 

 and it was not the breadth of his science, nor the depth of his meth- 

 odical experiment, but the height of his visionary conceits which 

 imposed upon the Middle Ages. Galen did not himself forget the 

 precept of Hippocrates: To look, to touch, to hear (/cat I8elv, 

 $iyeu/, Kal aKowrai) ; but he did not wholly subdue himself to the 



- this toilsome conversation with troublesome facts. Galen 



