A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



holds no such place, therefore, as their anatomical in- 

 vestigations. 



Half a century after the time of Herophilus there 

 appeared a Greek physician, Heraclides, whose repu- 

 tation in the use of drugs far surpasses that of the 

 anatomists of the Alexandrian school. His reputation 

 has been handed down through the centuries as that 

 of a physician, rather than a surgeon, although in his 

 own time he was considered one of the great surgeons 

 of the period. Heraclides belonged to the " Empiric" 

 school, which rejected anatomy as useless, depending 

 entirely on the use of drugs. He is thought to have 

 been the first physician to point out the value of 

 opium in certain painful diseases. His prescription 

 of this drug for certain cases of "sleeplessness, spasm, 

 cholera, and colic," shows that his use of it was not 

 unlike that of the modern physician in certain cases; 

 and his treatment of fevers, by keeping the patient's 

 head cool and facilitating the secretions of the body, 

 is still recognized as "good practice." He advocated 

 a free use of liquids in quenching the fever patient's 

 thirst a recognized therapeutic measure to-day, but 

 one that was widely condemned a century ago. 



ARCHIMEDES OF SYRACUSE AND THE FOUNDATION OF 

 MECHANICS 



We do not know just when Euclid died, but as he 

 was at the height of his fame in the time of Ptolemy I., 

 whose reign ended in the year 285 B.C., it is hardly 

 probable that he was still living when a young man 

 named Archimedes came to Alexandria to study. 

 Archimedes was born in the Greek colony of Syracuse, 



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