MEDICAL SCIENCES. 



to the independence and accuracy of his observations, and show that he knew 

 how to apply with advantage the most conflicting theories. He was the first 

 to resort to bleeding from the jugular vein, and to use iron filings in certain 

 affections of the blood. 



In the seventh century the Jewish doctors endeavoured to possess them- 

 selves of the teaching of medicine in the East, forming at Damascus and 

 Constantinople scientific assemblies, in which all real learning was lost in the 

 obscurities of cabalism. The East, always a land of illusions and fancies, was 

 only too accessible to the superstitious ideas implied in the magical and 

 supernatural treatment of disease. This mixture of error and truth is 

 nowhere more noticeable than in the Koran, a compilation which is as much 

 scientific as it is religious, and to which doctors from the schools of Alex- 

 andria and Dschoudisapour (the town founded by Sapor II.) must have con- 

 tributed in the name of Mahomet, for this code of Islamism contains, with 

 regard to physiology and hygiene, some very remarkable views and excellent 

 principles summarised in the shape of aphorisms which often remind one of 

 the language of Hippocrates. It is worth while mentioning here that, long 

 before Mahomet's time, the Arab doctors, who were also poets, legists, and 

 philosophers, had their share in the sacerdotal influences which contributed to 

 the civilisation of the Eastern races. Thus, when the conquests of Mahomet 

 had been consolidated with the sword, the native and foreign doctors residing 

 at Irak found greater security and protection from the Mussulmans at Bagdad 

 and Bassora than from the Emperors at Byzantium. 



Paul of ^Egineta was, in the seventh century, the last personage of note 

 belonging to the expiring school of Alexandria. This Greek doctor, whose 

 pathology was based upon the principles of Galen, Aetius, and Oribasius, also 

 had a system of his own for the treatment of different diseases, such as 

 ophthalmia, gout, and leprosy, which latter was spreading with frightful 

 rapidity. He inclined more towards methodism and eclecticism than towards 

 empiricism. One of his contemporaries, named Ahrun, who was not probably 

 a student of the Alexandria school, though he afterwards practised medicine 

 in that city, where he was a Christian priest, published a judicious treatise 

 upon various epidemics, such as scurvy and small-pox, which latter disease 

 had just made its appearance and was spreading rapidly, three centuries 

 before the Arab doctor, Rhazes, gave a more detailed description of them. 



The celebrated schools which had been founded at Bagdad, the new capital 



