HISTORY OP PHARMACY. 
43 
the culture of letters and sciences. Others retired to Lao- 
dicea where they established a medical school in the temple 
of Carus. Although such concurrent circumstances singu- 
larly favored the perfection of sciences in the school of 
Alexandria, yet all the results^that might be anticipated were 
not realized. 
Natural history could not acquire much from this pro- 
digious quantity of books, collected with more haste than 
choice, and which frequently diverted the erudite from 
applying themselves to experimental researches. The study 
of nature even took a false direction. The peculiar taste of 
the Egyptians for the marvellous led them to study merely 
those substances presenting something extraordinary or 
singular: from thence come the numerous works de mira- 
bilibus, dating from this epoch, and in which they too often 
digress from the truth. 
The Ptolemies had also established an Academy where 
learned men were lodged and entertained, likewise literary 
solemnities called Musarum et Jlpollinis ludi. 
These conventions, where the genius of speech shone more 
prominently, gave rise to fewer savants than orators and 
sophists; furthermore, encouraged by the value attached to 
books, scholiasts and commentators abounded ; it is like- 
wise to this epoch must be ascribed most cf the alterations, 
interpolations in the text of manuscripts, and those numer- 
ous apocryphal works amongst which it is difficult to recog- 
nise authentic or original writings. 
Neither did the medical sciences make great progress in 
the school of Alexandria. Yet this school was then the only 
one where knowledge to a certain extent could be acquired ; 
such physicians having belonged to it as Erasistratus and 
Herophilus, whose names, as well as a number of their * 
scholars, are interwoven with the history of Materia Medica 
and Pharmacy. 
Erasistratus, according to Pliny, was the grandson of 
Aristotle, by his mother's side. He had attended the lec- 
