4 PATHOLOGY. 
rules of the Afclepiades. From the fchool of Cos arofe 
Hippocrates, the fourteenth in defcent from Aifculapius. 
But the ftudy of medicine was not confined to this fa¬ 
mily ; it formed part of the education of kings and heroes. 
Hercules received from Chiron, in earlier times, the ru¬ 
diments of medicine. Ariftasus, king of Arcadia, was 
likewife a fcholar of the centaurs : to him we owe the in¬ 
troduction of the herb Jylphium, fuppofed by fome to be 
aflafcetida. Jafon, Telamon, Thefeus and Peleus,Ulyfles, 
Diomed, Hippolytus, and Achilles, were proficients in 
this art. Achilles is faid indeed to have firft ufed verdi¬ 
gris for the purpofe of cleaning foul ulcers. But all of 
them were inferior to the accomplilhed, the injured, Pa- 
lamedes; by the excellent rules of diet and exercife to 
which he fubmitted the foldiers, he prevented the plague 
from entering the Grecian camp after it had carried its 
ravages over raoft of the cities of the Hellefpont and even 
Troy itfelf. 
./Efculapiusflouriftied about 50 years before the Trojan 
war 5 and we have feen that his two Tons diftinguilhed 
themfelves in that war both by their valour and by their 
ikill in curing wounds. This indeed is the whole of the 
medical Ikill attributed to them by Homer ; for, in the 
plague which broke out in the Grecian camp, l.edoes not 
mention their being at all confulted. Nay, what is (fill 
more ftrange, though he fometimes mentions his heroes 
having their bones broken, he never takes notice of their 
being reduced or cured by any other than fupernatural 
means; as in the cafe of ^Eneas, whofe thigh-bone was 
broken by a Hone call at him by Diomed. The methods 
which thefe two famous furgeons ufed in curing the 
wounds of their fellow-foldiers, feems to have been the 
extracting or cutting out the darts which inflicted them, 
and applying emollient fomentations orftyptics to them 
when neceflary : and to thefe they undoubtedly attributed 
much more virtue than they could poflibly poflefs ; as 
appears from the following lines, where Homer defcribes 
Eurypylus as wounded and under the hands of Patroclus, 
who would certainly praCtife according to the directions 
of the furgeons of that time : 
Patroclus cut the forky fteel away ; 
Then in his hand a bitter root he bruis’d, 
The wound he walh’d, the llyptic juice infus’d. 
The clofing flefli that injtant ceas’d to glow; 
The wound to torture, and the blood to flow. Iliad, xi. 
The philofophers of Greece, by adapting their fpecula- 
tions to the elucidation of this fcience, lent it material 
aid. Pythagoras vifited Egypt and India, collected the 
therapeutic and dietetic maxims of thofe nations, and in¬ 
troduced them into his own country: unfortunately, in 
fo doing, he forgot the difference of climate and habits, 
.and endeavoured to apply the vegetable regimen too 
ftriCtly. He attended diligently to the ltudy of the ani¬ 
mal economy ; and he founded the fchool of Crotona, 
whence arofe Alcmaeon, an anatomift of great repute. 
With refpeCt to the knowledge this latter perfonage pof- 
fefled of the human ftruCture, it admits of doubt; but his 
/kill in comparative anatomy is well attefted by Ariftotle, 
Diogenes, and Plutarch: with him too originated the 
firft theory of fleep: he fuppofed, that, when the blood 
flows in the larger veflels only, fleep is induced; but, 
when it returns in the finaller ones, waking occurs. 
Empedocles, the diftinguiflied philofopher, was another 
ornament of the Pythagorean feCt. 
Befides thefe philofophers, and the Afclepiades, there 
were, at this period, other perfons who devoted them¬ 
felves to the profeflion of phyfic, and who occafionally 
were remunerated by a fixed falary. Thus Democetes of 
Crotona was retained at the court of the Samian tyrant 
Polycrates, with an allowance of two talents yearly: 
being afterwards taken prifoner, and carried as a flave in- 
do Perfia, he acquired great repute by curing Darius of a 
•fprained foot, after the Egyptian phyficians had failed ; 
iand alfo by his fuccefsful treatment of a tumour of the 
breaft, under which Atofia, the daughter of Cyrus, and 
wife of Darius, had laboured for a confiaerable time. 
(Herodot. iii. 133.) Such pradlitioners, from their wan¬ 
dering lives, were fometimes defignated by the name of 
s-Egio&vrat. Of this clafs, one of. the moll confpicuous 
was Acron of Agrigentum, the contemporary and rival 
of Empedocles, refpedting whom Pliny has fallen into a 
ftrange error, in defcribing him as the founder of the 
empiric fedt “under the fandtion of Empedocles.” Ac¬ 
cording to Diogenes, he was the author of fome books on 
medicine and dietetics, written in the Doric dialed!; and 
he fignalized himfelf at Athens, in the time of the great 
plague, by introducing the pradtice of fumigations, and 
thus affording relief to many. (Plut. de Ifld. et Ofir.) 
The gymnafia of ancient Greece feem alfo to have con¬ 
tributed to the improvement of the art. It belonged to 
the gymnafiarch, or pulajlrophylux , to regulate the diet 
of the youths who were trained in thefe feminaries ;_the 
yt//Avaran were prefumed to be converfant with difeafes; 
and it was the bufinefs of the ctXtiiflai to perform venefec- 
tion, to drefs wounds, fradtures, &c. They were fome¬ 
times called phyficians. It was in thefe feminaries that 
the gymnaftic fyftem of medicine originated, under the au- 
fpices of Iccus of Tarentum, and Herodicus of Selymbria. 
About this time, and contemporary with Hippocrates, 
flourilhed Democritus of Abdera, who made the firft 
public difledtion on record: he applied himfelf to this 
talk for the purpofe of afcertaining the nature and courfe 
of the bile; and difledted with fo much afliduity, that 
the Abderites fufpedted him of infanity, and accordingly 
fent for Hippocrates (as it is reported) to cure him : but 
the latter, fo far from finding him mad, difcovered that 
he was extremely wife, as he exprefles himfelf in a letter 
to his friend Damagetus. 
As we are now arrived at an era in which the hiftory 
of pathology will afl’ume, as it were, a tangible fliape, we 
fliall divide our large field of information into three fec- 
tions; the firft reaching to the decline of the art during 
the dark ages ; the fecond from that time to the end of 
the fixteenth century; and the third, to the prefent time. 
I. From the Time of Hippocrates to the dark Ages. 
Hippocrates has juftly been ftyled the Father of Me¬ 
dicine, fince his writings are the moft ancient exprefsly 
on this fubjedt which have been preferved. His tran- 
fcendent merit alone would, however, fecure to him that 
title. He has left behind him uleful hints on almoft every 
branch of medicine; and has inveftigated fome of them 
with an exadtnefs which has left us little to defire. On 
anatomy, though probably he did.not himfelf make dif- 
fedtions, he has compiled all the information extant in 
his time ; and his theory of medicine, though long fince 
exploded, merits, in comparifon with the hypothetical 
and extravagant notions that had preceded it, much en¬ 
comium. It was certainly more comprehenfible, and 
more explanatory of known fadts, than the dodtrine of 
Pythagoras, which accounted for every thing by the 
fcience of numbers ; or than that of Empedocles, which 
referred all phenomena to the agency of an ethereal fpi- 
rit. It is, however, the practical part of medicine that 
Hippocrates has fo much elucidated. We difcard his 
theory of Nature, his concodtions* and infpiflations; but 
in his account of difeafes, in the accurate hiftories he has 
afforded us of figns or fymptoms, their relations and ef- 
fedts, he Hands unrivalled. His prognojlics, too, have 
comparatively been little improved in the prefent day: 
indeed he carried them to fo great a degree of perfedtion, 
that he and his pupils were regarded by the vulgar as 
prophets. It ftiould be likewife recorded of him, that he 
endeavoured to dived the art he profefled of all that myl- 
teryand fuperftition in which he found it enveloped, and 
that he gave the firft outline of a fubjedt of great impor¬ 
tance, medical ethics. His authority has been revered for 
ages, and his maxims have been received as dogmas, not 
only in the fchools, but in the courts of law. We need 
1 not 
