XIV BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES AND MEDICINE 353 



with medicine. There is nothing to show that 

 the Asclepiads took any prominent share in the 

 work of founding anatomy, physiology, zoology, 

 and botany. Rather do these seem to have sprung 

 from the early philosophers, who were essentially 

 natural philosophers, animated by the character- 

 istically Greek thirst for knowledge as such. 

 Pythagoras, Alcmeon, Democritus, Diogenes of 

 ApoUonia, are all credited with anatomical and 

 physiological investigations; and, though Aristotle 

 is said to have belonged to an Asclepiad family, 

 and not improbably owed his taste for anatomical 

 and zoological inquiries to the teachings of his 

 father, the physician Nicomachus, the " Historia 

 Animalium," and the treatise " De Partibus 

 Animalium," are as free from any allusion to 

 medicine as if they had issued from a modern bio- 

 loo^ical laboratorv. 



It may be added, that it is not easy to see in 

 what way it could have benefited a physician of 

 Alexander's time to know all that Aristotle knew 

 on these subjects. His human anatomy was too 

 rough to avail much in diagnosis; his physiology 

 was too erroneous to supply data for pathological 

 reasoning. But when the Alexandrian school, 

 with Erasistratus and Herophilus at their head, 

 turned to account the opportunities of studying 

 human structure, afforded to them by the 

 Ptolemies, the value of the large amount of ac- 

 curate knowledge thus obtained to the surgeon 



