THE ALEXANDRIAN PERIOD 89 



3. MEDICINE AND THE NATURAL SCIENCES » 



Although Ptolemy II was a lover of curious and rare 

 animals, the natural sciences made scarcely any pro- 

 gress during his reign ; they remained as Aristotle and 

 Theophrastus had left them. The writings on these 

 subjects had a practical aim ; the culture of fields and 

 gardens, the raising of cattle. Certainly the poet 

 Callimachus compiled a catalogue of birds, and the 

 grammarian Aristophanes of Byzantium wrote a 

 history of animals, but these writers too often indulge 

 in wonders and fables. 



Medicine on the contrary, made real progress, 

 largely due to the practice of dissection, which, for- 

 bidden in Greece, was practised in Egypt, favoured by 

 the custom of embalming the bodies of the dead. It 

 appears that the Ptolemies even authorized the 

 physicians to make use of the living bodies of criminals 

 condemned to death (Celsus : de Medecina, p. 4). 

 Under these conditions an anatomy rapidly arose, 

 founded on exact observation, and discovery followed 

 discovery. 



Herophilus of Chalcedon is justly regarded as the 

 creator of human anatomy as weU as being the founder 

 of the medical school of Alexandria. A disciple of 

 Praxagoras (of the school of Cos), he avoided all dog- 

 matism and made observation and experience the sole 

 basis of his work. He discovered the nervous system 

 and was the first to explain its nature and function ; 

 he also dissected the eye and the liver. In practical 

 medicine he brought to fight the importance of the 

 pulse in diagnosis. In some respects, Erasistratus 

 of Ceos, the physician of Seleucus, was antagonistic 

 to Herophilus. For example, he opposed the Hippo- 

 cratic doctrine of the humours, and disapproved of the 

 practice of bleeding, so much favoured in ancient 



1 15 Heiberg, Naiurwiss., pp. 44, 46. 



