58 
HISTORY OF PHARMACY. 
or else salt water with a touch of ice in it. In general he 
chose his counterpoisons from amongst the tonics, aro- 
matics, and heating substances with which he associated 
sudorifics. In some cases he began by vomiting, at other 
times he employed purgatives, such as scammony, sweet 
wine, olive oil, and hellebore. Nicander was engaged in 
every branch of natural history, but generally showed him- 
self rather the poet than the naturalist. 
Notwithstanding the fables and popular opinions with 
which his writings abound, they exhibit useful documents 
of the Materia Medica of his time, and they may be re- 
garded as one of the most curious and authentic monuments 
of the therapeutics of Greece, their form having preserved 
them from alteration. Several scholiasts, however, have 
applied themselves to the two works which remain of him. 
C. L. Cadet has made the Theriaques and Mexiphar- 
maqueSj the object of an interesting and witty disser- 
tation.* 
According to Springel the Empirical School had the 
glory of reviving the study of the natural sciences, and 
plucking the Materia Medica out of the contempt into 
which the preceding school had suffered it to fall. Its fol- 
lowers did one thing useful, and showed themselves pos- 
sessed of the true genius of medicine, in preferring experience 
to imaginary theories ; but they were wrong to open the 
career to the abuse of polypharmacy, a field entered upon 
deeper and deeper by the successive schools. 
With Nicander terminates the history of the Alexandrian 
School. The Romans, conquerers of Mithridates, heirs of 
the Kings of Pergamus, — Greece subjugated and bereaved 
of her philosophers, — Egypt abandoned by her savants^ 
and delivered up to civil war; — such are the causes of the 
rapid downfall of this school, the broken wrecks of which 
we shall see transported to Italy, and under the name of 
* Inserted in the Bulletin de Fharmacie, vol. ii. p. 337. 
