THE ORGANS OF VOLUNTARY MOTION. 439 



ihe bones, and surround the joints." It is clear that he means here 

 the muscles, and therefore it is with injustice that he has been accused 

 of the gross error of deriving the nerves from the heart. And he is 

 held to have really had the merit 4 of discovering the nerves of sensa- 

 tion, which he calls the " canals of the brain " (tfo'poi <rov syxs$<xXou) ; but 

 the analysis of the mechanism of motion is left by him almost untouched. 

 Perhaps his want of sound mechanical notions, and his constant strain- 

 ing after verbal generalities, and systematic classifications of the widest 

 kind, supply the true account of his thus missing the solution of one 

 of the simplest problems of Anatomy. 



In this, however, as in other subjects, his immediate predecessors 

 were far from remedying the deficiencies of his doctrines. Those who 

 professed to study physiology and medicine were, for the most part, 

 studious only to frame some general system of abstract principles, 

 which might give an appearance of connexion and profundity to their 

 tenets. In this manner the successors of Hippocrates became a medi- 

 cal school, of great note in its day, designated as the Dogmatic 

 school ; B in opposition to which arose an Empiric sect, who professed 

 to deduce their modes of cure, not from theoretical dogmas, but from 

 experience. These rival parties prevailed principally in Asia Minoi 

 and Egypt, during the time of Alexander's successors, a period rich 

 in names, but poor in discoveries ; and we find no clear evidence of 

 any decided advance in anatomy, such as we are here attempting to 

 trace. 



The victories of Lucullus and Pompeius, in Greece and Asia, made 

 the Romans acquainted with the Greek philosophy ; and the conse- 

 quence soon was, that shoals of philosophers, rhetoricians, poets, and 

 physicians* streamed from Greece, Asia Minor, and Egypt, to Rome 

 and Italy, to traffic their knowledge and their arts for Roman wealth. 

 Among these, was one person whose name makes a great figure in the 

 history of medicine, Asclepiades of Prusa in Bithynia. This man 

 appears to have been a quack, with the usual endowments of his class ; 

 boldness, singularity, a contemptuous rejection of all previously 

 esteemed opinions, a new classification of diseases, a new list of medi- 

 cines, and the assertion of some wonderful cures. He would not, on 

 such accounts, deserve a place in the history of science, but that he 

 became the founder of a new school, the Methodic, which professed t 

 hold itself separate both from the Dogmatics and the Empirics. 



1 Tb. i. 456. 6 Sprengel, Gesch. Arz. i. 583. 6 Sprengel, Gesch. Ar li. 5 



