In mechanics and physics, astronomy, mathematics and optics, the work of the Alexandrians constitutes the basis of a large part of our modern knowledge.  The school-boy of today—­or at any rate of my day—­studies the identical problems that were set by Euclid 300 B.C., and the student of physics still turns to Archimedes and Heron, and the astronomer to Eratosthenes and Hipparchus.  To those of you who wish to get a brief review of the state of science in the Alexandrian School I would recommend the chapter in Vol.  I of Dannemann’s history.(31)

     (31) Friedrich Dannemann:  Grundriss einer Geschichte der
     Naturwissenschaften, Vol.  I, 3d ed., Leipzig, 1908.

Of special interest to us in Alexandria is the growth of the first great medical school of antiquity.  Could we have visited the famous museum about 300 B.C., we should have found a medical school in full operation, with extensive laboratories, libraries and clinics.  Here for the first time the study of the structure of the human body reached its full development, till then barred everywhere by religious prejudice; but full permission was given by the Ptolemies to perform human dissection and, if we may credit some authors, even vivisection.  The original writings of the chief men of this school have not been preserved, but there is a possibility that any day a papyrus maybe found which will supplement the scrappy and imperfect knowledge afforded us by Pliny, Celsus and Galen.  The two most distinguished names are Herophilus—­who, Pliny says, has the honor of being the first physician “who searched into the causes of disease”—­and Erasistratus.

Herophilus, ille anatomicorum coryphaeus, as Vesalius calls him, was a pupil of Praxagoras, and his name is still in everyday use by medical students, attached to the torcular Herophili.  Anatomy practically dates from these Alexandrines, who described the valves of the heart, the duodenum, and many of the important parts of the brain; they recognized the true significance of the nerves (which before their day had been confounded with the tendons), distinguished between motor and sensory nerves, and regarded the brain as the seat of the perceptive faculties and voluntary action.  Herophilus counted the pulse, using the water-clock for the purpose, and made many subtle analyses of its rate and rhythm; and, influenced by the musical theories of the period, he built up a rhythmical pulse lore which continued in medicine until recent times.  He was a skilful practitioner and to him is ascribed the statement that drugs are the hands of the gods.  There is a very modern flavor to his oft-quoted expression that the best physician was the man who was able to distinguish between the possible and the impossible.