80 Kansas Academy of iicience. 



olo^st. Much of his activity was directed towards proving 

 that the brain, instead of the heart, was the center of the 

 nervous system. The latter view was held by Aristotle, who 

 further held that the brain acted only as a sponge, to cool the 

 heart. Galen cut the spinal cord of animals, which induced 

 paralysis. He proved that the kidneys secreted urine. 



With the death of Galen medicine fell a \ictim of the times, 

 so far as Europe was concerned. It was buried in the long 

 period of the Dark Ages under that reversion to mysticism, de- 

 mons, incantations and charms which characterized the Dark 

 Ages — the age when the church arrogated the sole right to be 

 the arbiter of all knowledge. However, through one of those 

 strange happenings, of which historj- is full, the contributions 

 of Hippocrates and Galen were not entirely lost. 



V. MOHAMMED.\NS AND MEDICINE. 

 Strange to say, the saviors were those dark-faced Asians 

 who had set out with the crescent and scimitar to annihilate the 

 Christians. Not long after Mohammed's death, practically 

 all of eastern Asia and northern Africa was subjugated to 

 those who held : "There is only one God. and Mohammed is 

 his prophet." Notwithstanding that the Mohammedans burned 

 the immense, priceless library of Alexandria, still the Khalifs 

 and their Arabian followers became the earnest and enthusi- 

 astic patrons of ancient and classical learning. It happened 

 that at Constantinople there was a school known as the Nes- 

 torians, who pertinaciously clung to the old order of learn-, 

 ing, despite the fact that the church had otherwise decreed. 

 They were consequently banished from Constantinople, a. D. 

 431, and went to the valley of the Euphrates, where they 

 founded a church and a medical school, and there proceeded 

 to continue the study and teaching of Grecian leaniing. The 

 Khalifs of Bagdad welcomed them with open arms. The 

 Nestorians translated into the Arabian the Grecian classics, 

 and became the teachers of Khalifs. Even the famous Haroun- 

 al-Raschid included always a hundred learned men in his trav- 

 eling retinue. Galen was translated, and was elevated almost 

 to the dignity and rank of the Koran. The Arabs became 

 deeply interested in chemistrv- — perhaps alchemy is a better 

 term for their activities. At any rate, nitric acid, sulphuric 

 acid and phosphorus were among their discoveries. Arabian 



