HISTORY OP PHARMACY. 
49 
menced, the fabrication of which remained crude for a long 
time, but gradually superseded honey as a condiment. 
Herophilus gave a great impulse to the employment of 
medicines; his scholars, according to custom, exaggerated 
thedoctrine of the master. But out of the same school there 
soon arose a new sect, that of Empirics, which was to give to 
the Materia Medica a new activity, and a better guide to 
the study of medicines. Happy, indeed, if this reform had 
not been the source of deplorable abuses. 
II. THE EMPIRICAL SCHOOL. 
Serapio, Mithridates and Nicander, — The Kings of 
Pharmaceutists. 
The origin of the Empirical school may be attributed to 
many circumstances concurring at once: but, in the igno- 
rance of any other fact, to a kind of revolution in the medi- 
cal sciences. Thus it was that the steps towards perfection 
in anatomy, and the objections that it raised, as opposed to 
the principles of the dogmatic school — the influence of Pyr- 
rho's system of philosophy, then much in vogue; and lastly, 
the introduction into therapeutics of numerous new medi- 
cines imported through commerce, cast at once confusion 
among the established doctrines, and began to divert phy- 
sicians from the path which Hippocrates had traced by ob- 
servation. 
Philinus, of Cos, pupil of Herophilus, was the first to 
build up a system of uncertainty in medical theories, and to 
propose an exclusive reliance upon experience in the treat- 
ment of diseases. Serapio, of Alexandria, his successor, 
gave still further extension to this system, and laid down 
the principle not to admit but that which is evident, to re- 
ject all hypotheses, and even every investigation into the 
hidden cause of diseases. It is evident that the study of 
medicines was to be the base of this new method ; accord- 
vol. ix. — no. i. 5 
