Natural- Histdrical Collections. Ifl^i 



making doubtful what seemed certain. Tliey soon even went so far as to deny 

 motion, and supported their assertion by demonstrations of which it was ofteni 

 rather difficult to find the weak side. 



Parmenides and Zeno went to Athens about the year 460 before Christ. Anax- 

 :»goras arrived there about the same period. Socrates was then ten years old, 

 and thus might liear the discourses of the whole three. 



Atomistic School. Leucippus, the founder of the atomistic sect, was the con - 

 temporary of Zeno and Parmenides, and the avowed opponent of their doctrine. 

 Disgiisted with idealism from the abuse which he had seen made of it, he went 

 into the opposite extreme, and became entirely materialist. He rejected alike 

 the intelligent unity of the Elaean school, and that whole which is neither mate- 

 rial nor immaterial, and the numbers with the harmonic proportions of the school 

 of Pythagoras. He recognised nothing beyond vacuity and atoms. These very 

 atoms he despoiled of the properties which other philosophers had admitted, and 

 allowed them only figure and motion. The various properties of bodies, their 

 colour, their consistence, heat and cold, depended upon the figure and arrange- 

 ment of these molecules. The eternal circle of destruction and reproduction of 

 beings resulted from their motion. The soul itself was but an aggregation of 

 atoms in a particular mode of combination. 



Democritus of Abdera was the continuator of this school. The year of his 

 birth is not well determined, and it is only known that he lived a very long time, 

 and in 399 before Christ, the same year with Socrates. He supported the system of 

 atoms, having found a means of combination for them. Leucippus had admitted 

 variation only in the figure of these atoms, but Democritus admitted it in their 

 motion also. He distinguished direct motion, oblique motion, and rotatory mo- 

 tion, according as the images which make impression upon our senses are corpo- 

 real, or formed of very minute particles which, proceeding from external objects, 

 touch our organs. 



Alcmeon had studied the anatomy of various animals, but Democritus was in 

 reality the first who instituted comparative anatomy. He observed the differences 

 of organization of a great number of species, and tried to deduce from them the 

 differences in their manners and habits. He knew the biliary passages, and dis- 

 covered the causes of mania, which he placed in an alteration of the viscera of the 

 lower belly. 



The atomistic sect has a peculiar and very decided character, whereas the 

 other three, being only branches of the school of Thales, resemble each other in 

 various points. 



The medical school, which existed along with these four sects, was much older 

 than any of them, and had been perpetuated from time immemorial in a single 

 family, that of the Asclepiadae. Its two principal branches were established in 

 Gnidos and Cos. Most of the temples of Esculapius were kept by priests of this 

 family. 



In these temples, diseased persons were received. They were made to observe 

 certain religious ceremonies. Remedies were administered to them, and those 

 that had benefited them were kept in mind. Moreover, they who had been 

 healed at a distance from these places, often sent to them the history of their dis- 

 ease, as if ex voto. 



It was from one of these collections that had been continued for nearly 800 

 years, that Hippocrates drew ; and his books present, as it were, an abstract of the 

 researches of the Asclepiada;. All the works, however, which bear the name of 

 this illustrious physician, do not belong to the same author, as is perceived by the 

 difference in the style, and the contradictions which exist in the difl^erent treatises. 

 It would appear that there were three individuals of the same name and family. 

 The first lived in the time of Miltiades, and to him is attributed the book on 

 fractures or articulations. The second and most celebrated was a contemporary 

 of Socrates. 



Anaxagoras imited the school of Thales with that of Socrates, whose master 

 he was. When the Persians subjugated Asia Minor, he had left Clazomenes, 



