218 Natural' Historical Collections. 



correct ; and yet it is according to this alleged distribution of the blood-vessels 

 that he is guided in prescribing his different bleedings ; for, according to his 

 ideas, the place of selection varies according to the symptoms of diseases. 



Hippocrates considered the brain as a spongy organ destined to absorb the 

 moisture of the body. He had no knowledge of the nerves ; and when the word 

 i^rve occurs in his writings, he means by it the tendons, the ligaments, and, in 

 general, the diiFerent white tissues. In his time it was almost impossible to ac- 

 quire in Greece any tolerable ideas respecting the internal organization of the 

 liuman body. To touch a dead body with any other intent than that of paying 

 it the last rites would have been looked upon as a liorrible profanation. It is 

 true that in Egypt the custom of embalming was to a certain degree favourable 

 to anatomical studies, but we have said that Hippocrates did not travel to that 

 country. He did not, however, neglect to study all that could be known without 

 the aid of dissection. The surgical operations which he performed, and the treat- 

 ment of the diseases of the bones, must have pretty frequently afforded him op- 

 portunities of making osteological observations. It is, in fact, in this department 

 that he has deviated least from the truth. 



Hippocrates' physiology is not better than his anatomy. It is founded in a 

 great part upon the theory of the four elements, and upon their properties, the 

 hot, the cold, the dry, and the humid. It is entirely an a priori system, a work of 

 imagination. But the moment we come to the medical treatment, the great ob- 

 server again appears. In this department we find reflections as just as profound 

 upon the influence of climate, season, and food. 



Ctesias, like Hippocrates, was of the Asclepiadae, but he was sprung from the 

 branch that resided at Rhodes. He had followed the army of the Ten Thou- 

 sand, and, after having been made prisoner on that expedition, he became the 

 physician of Artaxerxes, at whose court he resided seventeen years. On his re- 

 turn to Greece, he published a history of Persia and Assyria, which he says he 

 took from the archives of Ecbatana, and an account of India, which he also bor- 

 rowed from the Persian authors. 



In the latter work, of which there remain only a few fragments preserved by 

 Photius, several facts in natural liistory occur. Mention is made of the elephant, 

 an animal which was known to the Greeks only after the conquests of Alexander ; 

 die parrot, and the faculty which it has of pronouncing words ; and the bamboo, 

 which the author describes as a reed of such large dimensions that two men could 

 hardly embrace it. 



Ctesias is fond of exaggerations like this, and full of absurd stories. We must 

 not, however, consider as entirely fictitious all the extraordinary recitals that occur 

 in his book, many of them being founded upon tlistorted traditions or misunder- 

 stood figures. As an example of the latter, we may mention the history of the 

 manticore, an animal with the head of a lion, three rows of teeth and a scorpion's 

 tail. It is evident that Ctesias, in this case, has described as a real animal the 

 symbolical being, the image of which he had seen represented upon the monu- 

 ments of Persepolis. His description of the unicorn is in like manner founded 

 upon the figure of a rhinoceros, which is of frequent occurrence in these sculp- 

 tures. Distorted natural facts are also frequently recognized. Thus, we may 

 judge that it is not oil, but naphtha, that covers the surface of certain lakes, and 

 that it is not amber but gum that certain rivers carry along at determinate pe- 

 riods. In like manner may be explained the history of insects and flowers which 

 form a purple dye, that of white and horned wild asses, &c. But we also find 

 fables entirely without foundation, and which it would be useless to repeat here. 

 These fables have been perhaps more attended to than the true descriptions, and 

 have infected almost all the works that have appeared since. 



Lectuhe VII.— Aristotl£ Aristotle was bom at Stagyra, in the year 



.384 before Christ. His father Nicomachus, being physician to the king of Ma- 

 cedonia, Amyntas the Third, he was brought up with the young princes, and 

 was in a manner the companion of Phihp, who, shortly after ascending the throne, 



