Medicine. 
Ws into that of dogmatists and empyrics ; 
the latter having commenced with Serapion 
of Alexandria, about the year 287 before 
Christ, who, according to Galen, retained 
Ihe mode of practice of Hippocrates, but 
pretended to despise his mode of reasoning. 
In reality this sect, to which Serapion be- 
longed, and of which, if not the founder, 
he was a very zealous supporter in its ear- 
liest infancy, depended upon their own per- 
sonal experience alone, whether progressive 
or fortuitous. On the contrary, the dog- 
matists affirmed, that there is a necessity 
for knowing the latent as well as the evi- 
dent causes of diseases, and that physicians 
ought to understand the natural actions and 
functions of the human body, and conse- 
quently its internal organs. 
The physicians of chief fame who flou- 
rished subsequently to this division, were 
Asclepiades, who opposed the Hippocratic 
theory of natural power and sympathy, or 
attraction, by engrafting upon medicine 
the physical principles of the Epicurean 
philosophy : Tliemison, the founder of the 
methodic sect, whose doctrines evinced 
equal hostility to the dogmatists and empy- 
rics, and divided diseases into the two 
classes of hypertonic and atonic, a division 
which in various modifications has descended 
to the present day : Thessalus, contempo- 
rary with Nero, a man of some merit, but 
of inordinate vanity ; and Celsus, deservedly 
denominated the Latin Hippocrates, whose 
woi"k is equally valuable for the purity of 
its language, and the knowledge.it coiiuuu- 
nicates of the state of medicine at the time 
he wrote. 
About the year after Christ 131, in the 
reign of Adrian, appeared the celebrated 
Galen, whose name makes so conspicuous 
an appearance in the history of physic. 
Practitioners were at this time divided into 
the three sections of methodists, dogmatists, 
and empyrics. Galen inclined to the second 
party, but with a true eclectic spirit under- 
took to combine with its doctrine whatever- 
existed of real worth in the two adverse 
systems ; and hence, to reform and give a 
finish to the science of medicine beyond 
what it had ever possessed before. For the 
most part he was a follower of Hippocrates, 
whose name he revered, and whose opinions 
he commented upon ; asserting in the course 
of his comments that he had never been 
thoroughly understood before. Like Hip- 
pocrates, he denominated the vital principle 
nature ; like him he admitted the existence 
of four distinct humours, from tlie predo- 
minancy, or deficiency, or disproportion of 
which, originates the different temperaments 
of the animal frame, and the varieties in the 
different diseases to which it is subject : 
these humours are the blood, phlegm, yellow 
and black bile. He likewise established 
three distinct kinds of auras, gases, or spi- 
rits, a natural, a vital, and an animal, which 
he regarded as so many instruments to dis- 
tinct faculties ; referring the seat and action 
of the first chiefly to the liver, of the se- 
cond to the heart, of the third to the brain. 
His authority, in spite of all the fancies 
which are interwoven into his system, con- 
tinued to prevail till the overthrow of the 
Roman empire, and learning and the arts 
were transferred to the eastern empire : un- 
der the auspices of which, however, the 
science of medicine does not appear to have 
made any progress ; the Saracenic physi- 
cians totally neglecting tiie study of anato- 
my and every other auxiliary pursuit, and 
merely adding to the Materia Medica a va- 
riety of plants, whose names we now sel- 
dom hear of, and whose pharmaceutic vir- 
tues have long been despised and forgot- 
ten. 
From the period at which we are now ar- 
rived, till the commencement of the six- 
teenth "century, the history of medicine 
furnishes no particulars of interest. It was 
this epoch that gave birth to Paracelsus, 
who having plunged deeply into the science 
of alchemy, if such a term as science be not 
prostituted by an application to such a sub- 
ject, proscribing by one broad sweep all 
the reasonings of the ancient authors, en- 
deavoured to explain all the facts and doc- 
trines of medicine upon the principles of 
the fashionable science of the day. 
It was in 1628 that medicine acquired a 
knowledge of the momentous fact of the 
circulation of the blood, through the inde- 
fatigable labours of Dr. W. Harvey, who 
nevertheless had to struggle for years against 
a double torrent of nearly equal violence 
before the jealousies and prejudices of the 
profes.sion were completely mastered : some 
denying the fact altogether, and others con- 
tending that it was a point that had been 
ascertained for ages, and consequently that 
he was by no means entitled to the honour 
of the discovery. The establishment of this 
important fact, however, did not, even for 
a long period after its general admission, 
produce all the advantages which mivlit 
have been expected from it. For the phy- 
siologists of the day, in reasoning upon the 
powers by which this phoenoraenon, as well 
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