418 ANDROPHYSICS. 



CHAPTER III. 



TIIEREOLOGY. 



IN the branch of Thereology, we include the study of diseases, 

 and the practice of medicine. The name is derived from the Greek, 

 8if>iu, I cure, or take care of; and hence it may be applied to the 

 means of preventing, as well as of removing disease. We make it 

 therefore to comprehend the subjects of Hygienics, or the means of 

 preserving health; Nosology, or the classification of diseases; Pa- 

 thology, or their anatomical and physiological effects ; Etiology, or 

 their causes ; Symptomatology, or their symptoms ; and Clinics, or 

 the Practice of Medicine, as the name implies, at the bedside of the 

 patient. The term prognostics, is applied to those symptoms which 

 indicate the causes or probable event of diseases ; and diagnostics, 

 to those symptoms which distinguish a disease from other similar 

 ones. The Institutes of Medicine, a term of somewhat indefinite 

 meaning, but applied to the physiological, pathological, therapeutic, 

 and hygienic relations of medicine, belongs partly to this, and partly 

 to the preceding branch of Androphysics : but as the term Medicine, 

 is often applied to all the branches of this department, as well as to the 

 remedies themselves, we have selected for the present branch what 

 appears to us a definite and unexceptionable name. 



The Egyptians attributed the invention of Medicine to Thoth, the 

 Hermes of the Greeks ; but the Greeks ascribed this invention to 

 Chiron the centaur, and his pupil ^Esculapius ; who probably lived 

 about 1260 B. C. jEsculapius is said to have first practised bleeding; 

 and Melampus, probably his contemporary, to have introduced the 

 use of purgatives : but these remedies are also said to have been 

 employed in Egypt, more than 200 years earlier. The practice of 

 Medicine in Greece, was for ages confined to the descendants of 

 jEsculapius ; and from his name, Asclepias in Greek, they were 

 called Asclepiades ; being also prophets and priests at the shrine of 

 their deified ancestor. While Pythagoras attempted to explain dis- 

 eases by his mystic numbers, or planetary influences ; Democritus, 

 by his theory of atoms, and a vacuum ; and Heraclitus, by his ideas 

 of ethers and elements ; it was left for Hippocrates, one of the Ascle- 

 piades, to establish the practice of medicine on rational principles, of 

 experiment and observation. Hippocrates, however, believed in four 

 constitutional temperaments ; the sanguineous, phlegmatic, choleric 

 or bilious, and melancholic; according to the predominance of blood, 

 phlegm, yellow bile, or black bile, which he supposed to be the four 

 principal humors. 



The successors of Hippocrates, combining his doctrines with those 

 of the Platonic philosophy, founded the dogmatic school in medi- 

 cine ; which flourished at Alexandria, and often substituted wild 

 speculations for facts and experience. In opposition to this, Herophi- 

 lus, and his adherents, founded the empiric school ; which professed 

 to be guided by experience alone. The methodic school, originated 



