PROGRESS IN ANATOMY 



only by the persistent ancient error that the 

 arteries carried, not blood, but air. 



He conceived illness as resulting from the 

 loading of the parts of the organism with in- 

 sufficiently digested food-matter; which pre- 

 vented the organism from functioning. This 

 made a condition of " plethora," from which 

 resulted the various sicknesses. Thus he re- 

 garded fever (which he did not consider in 

 itself a special disease, but a symptom) as re- 

 sulting from a stoppage of the circulation of 

 the pnewna in the large arteries, due to the 

 intrusion of blood from overloaded veins. He 

 sought to remove the " plethora " as the cause 

 of the disease; but did not concern himself 

 in practice with the remoter causes of the 

 plethora itself. Thus his diagnosis was local 

 and special, — " Cnidian " indeed, — and did 

 not follow the larger and far-reaching lines of 

 the Hippocratic prognosis. 



It may be supposed that the therapeutic 

 principles of Erasistratus did not lead practi- 

 tioners to apply the growing knowledge of 

 anatomy to the cure of disease. The applica- 

 tion was too baffling. Yet the rivalry between 

 his school and that of Herophilus brought the 

 practice of medicine to its zenith in the years 



[89] 



