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 pneuma 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] 



