plants; in the botany of Theophrastus, 455. To
one trait of master and pupil I must refer—the
human feeling, not alone of man for man, but a sympathy
that even claims kinship with the animal world.
“The spirit with which he (Theophrastus) regarded
the animal world found no second expression till the
present age” (Gomperz). Halliday, however,
makes the statement that Porphyry(30) goes as far as
any modern humanitarian in preaching our duty towards
animals.
(30) W. R. Halliday:
Greek Divination, London, Macmillan &
Co., 1913.
ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL
From the death of Hippocrates about the year
375 B.C. till the founding of the Alexandrian School,
the physicians were engrossed largely in speculative
views, and not much real progress was made, except
in the matter of elaborating the humoral pathology.
Only three or four men of the first rank stand out
in this period: Diocles the Carystian, “both
in time and reputation next and second to Hippocrates”
(Pliny), a keen anatomist and an encyclopaedic writer;
but only scanty fragments of his work remain.
In some ways the most important member of this group
was Praxagoras, a native of Cos, about 340 B.C.
Aristotle, you remember, made no essential distinction
between arteries and veins, both of which he held
to contain blood: Praxagoras recognized that the
pulsation was only in the arteries, and maintained
that only the veins contained blood, and the arteries
air. As a rule the arteries are empty after death,
and Praxagoras believed that they were filled with
an aeriform fluid, a sort of pneuma, which was responsible
for their pulsation. The word arteria, which
had already been applied to the trachea, as an air-containing
tube, was then attached to the arteries; on account
of the rough and uneven character of its walls the
trachea was then called the arteria tracheia, or the
rough air-tube.(31a) We call it simply the trachea,
but in French the word trachee-artere is still used.
(31a) Galen: De
usu partium, vii, Chaps. 8-9.
Praxagoras was one of the first to make an exhaustive
study of the pulse, and he must have been a man of
considerable clinical acumen, as well as boldness,
to recommend in obstruction of the bowels the opening
of the abdomen, removal of the obstructed portion and
uniting the ends of the intestine by sutures.
After the death of Alexander, Egypt fell into the
hands of his famous general, Ptolemy, under whose
care the city became one of the most important on
the Mediterranean. He founded and maintained a
museum, an establishment that corresponded very much
to a modern university, for the study of literature,
science and the arts. Under his successors, particularly
the third Ptolemy, the museum developed, more especially
the library, which contained more than half a million
volumes. The teachers were drawn from all centres,
and the names of the great Alexandrians are among
the most famous in the history of human knowledge,
including such men as Archimedes, Euclid, Strabo and
Ptolemy.
