105 
This is easily accounted for as a consequence of the increased 
communication of the Greeks with Persia and India, subse- 
quent to the expedition of Alexander, the voyage of Nearchus, 
the reign of the Seleucidae, and the embassy of Megasthenes 
and Onesicritus. In ascending, therefore, at once from 
Dioscorides to Theophrastus, or at least 300 years, it 
might be supposed, if we omitted taking the above facts 
into consideration, that the separation between these authors 
was too great to justify us in concluding that the same 
names always indicated the same substances, in these 
different times. To this, it may be replied, that though 
there were no celebrated authors during this period who 
treated expressly of the same subjects, yet there was 
throughout a series of writers on medicine, as well as of 
practitioners, who must have employed the same medicines ; 
among which, those from the East always held a conspi- 
cuous place. Thus, Celsus, Archigenes, Andromachus, 
Aretaeus, Ccelius Aurelianus, Soranus, Themison, Ascle- 
piades, Heraclides, Serapion, Nicander, and many others 
lived during this time, and the sects of the Methodics, 
Pneumatics, and Eclectics, principally flourished. Hence 
it is most probable, that the knowledge of the names 
and drugs was correctly transmitted downwards. We 
may therefore safely infer, that the few drugs described 
even by Theophrastus, are the same as those which we 
find under the same names in Dioscorides : as, for instance, 
the two kinds of pepper, cinnamon, cassia, cardamoms, 
ebony, olibanum, costus, calamus aromaticus (xaxa^oj 
tvQaiAQs), schcenanthus, amomum, spikenard, and some 
others; with myrrh, crocus, carthamus, coriander, sesamum, 
&c. It is interesting to find that most of the above aro- 
matic substances are described by Theophrastus (lib. ix. 
c. vii.), as being brought from India, with some from Arabia. 
Cinnamon and Cassia, I may mention, are described with 
p 
