FOUNDATIONS OF MEDICINE 



II 



which, after his period, was forgotten till the eighteenth century, 

 but he seems to have failed to recognize infection. 



The works of Hippocrates, who is justly considered to be the 

 Father of medicine, are of a very high standard, but it is probable 

 that directly or indirectly he owed much to Indian and Egyptian 

 influences. 



Alexandrian Medicine. — War produces great changes in the social 

 life of nations, and no exception is made for that portion which 

 deals with disease. The wars of Alexander the Great led to the 

 foundation of the city of Alexandria in the year 331 B.C., and this 

 was followed by the transference of the headquarters of medical 

 knowledge from Greece to Egypt, where this knowledge was 

 advanced along the systematic lines laid down by Aristotle. 



The result of this was that anatomy, pathological anatomy, and 

 clinical medicine, progressed hand in hand with zoology and botany, 

 and here in 170 B.C. Agatharchides described Dracunculus. 



Under the Ptolemies medicine flourished, but with the fall of 

 Cleopatra came the end of the first and by far the greater period 

 of Alexandrian medicine, but its subsequent history is curious and 

 interesting. Before the end of the great period, Alexandrian 

 medicine had found its way into Mesopotamia, and thence into 

 Syria, which previously had been under the influence of Accadian 

 medicine as handed down by Babylonia and Assyria. Centuries 

 later, when Alexandrian medicine had fallen to a very low level, 

 it was given a flickering spirit by Syrians driven to Alexandria by 

 the Persian invasion of their country in the days of Heraclius. 

 The result was that Syriac medicine took hold of the city, and 

 works appeared in the Syrian language. Thus, in the seventh 

 century of the present era a priest called Aaron translated into 

 Syriac thirty treatises by Abu Fara j , while later Sergius added two 

 further treatises to this number. This is the heyday of Syriac 

 medicine and the much lesser period of Alexandrian medicine, 

 which had long ago given place to Graeco-Roman medicine. 



Graeeo-Roman Medicine. — After Alexandrian medicine came 

 Graeco-Roman medicine, largely derived directly from the Greek, 

 for Roman medicine, until this influence came to be felt, was very 

 primitive. iVmong the physicians of this period may be mentioned 

 Themison of Laodicea (50 B.C.), who was the first to describe 

 elephantiasis grsecorum, or leprosy. 



After him comes the great master of Roman medicine, Aulus 

 Cornelius Celsus (25 B.C. to a.d. 45). It is quite possible that 

 Celsus was not a medical man, but, whether or not, he has left 

 behind him in his eight books of medicine a most valuable treatise. 

 To him belongs the credit of clearly distinguishing two types of 

 tertian malarial fever — viz., a simple and a much graver form. 

 Hundreds of years later this was put upon a scientific basis by the 

 researches of Marchiafava, Celli, and Bignami, in the same city 

 (Rome). He also recognized the double quartan fever, and gave 

 a description of elephantiasis, by which he meant leprosy. 



