338 THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES AND MEDICINE. 



was facilitated by such and such measures, they estab- 

 lished laws of nature, and began the construction of the 

 science of pathology. All true science begins with em- 

 piricism though all true science is such exactly, in so 

 far as it strives to pass out of the empirical stage into 

 that of the deduction of empirical from more general 

 truths. Thus, it is not wonderful, that the early physi- 

 cians had little or nothing to do with the development 

 of biological science ; and, on the other hand, that the 

 early biologists did not much concern themselves with 

 medicine. There is nothing to show that the Asclepiads 

 took any prominent share in the work of founding anat- 

 omy, physiology, zoology, and botany. Rather do these 

 seem to have sprung from the early philosophers, who 

 were essentially natural philosophers, animated by the 

 characteristically Greek thirst for knowledge as such. 

 Pythagoras, Alcmeon, Democritus, Diogenes of Apol- 

 lonia, are all credited with anatomical and physiological 

 investigations ; and, though Aristotle is said to have be- 

 longed to an Asclepiad family, and not improbably owed 

 his taste for anatomical and zoological inquiries to the 

 teachings of his father, the physician Kicomachus, the 

 " Historia Animalium," and the treatise " De Partibus 

 Animalium," are as free from any allusion to medicine 

 as if they had issued from a modern biological laboratory. 

 It may be added, that it is not easy to see in what 

 way it could have benefited a physician of Alexander's 

 time to know all that Aristotle knew on these subjects. 

 His human anatomy was too rough to avail much in 



