Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/835

Rh HISTORY.] work of Soranus, and which is the principal source of our knowledge of the methodic school. The work on diseases of women is the only complete work on that subject which has come down to us from antiquity, and shows remarkable fulness of practical knowledge in relation to its subject. It is notable that an important instrument of research, the speculum, which has been reinvented in modern times, was used by Soranus ; and specimens of still earlier date, showing great mechanical perfection, have been found among the ruins of Pompeii. The work on acute and chronic diseases is also full of practical knowledge, but penetrated with the theories of the methodists. The methodic school lasted certainly for some centuries, and influenced the revival of medical science in the Middle Ages, though overshadowed by the greater reputation of Galen. It was the first definite product of Greek medicine on Roman soil, but was destined to be followed by others, which kept up a more or less successful rivalry with it, and with the Hippocratic tradition. The so-called pneumatic school was founded by Athenanis, in the 1st century after Christ. According to its doctrines the normal as well as diseased actions of the body were to be referred to the operation of the pneuma or universal soul. This doctrine, crudely transferred from philosophical speculation, was intended to reconcile the humoral (or Hippocratic) and solidist (or methodic) schools; but the methodists seem to have claimed Athenasus as one of themselves. The conflicts of the opposing schools, and the obvious deficiencies of each, led many physicians to try and combine the valuable parts of each system, and to call themselves eclectics. Among these were found many of the most eminent physicians of Greece-Roman times. It may be sufficient to name Rufus of Ephesus, and Archigenes, who is mentioned by Juvenal. Although no system or important doctrine of medicine was originated by the Roman intellect, and though the practice of the profession was probably almost entirely in the hands of the Greeks, the most complete picture which we have of medical thought and activity in Roman times is due to a Latin pen, and to one who was, in all prob ability, not a physician. A. Cornelius Celsus, a Roman patrician, who lived probably in the first century, appears to have studied medicine as a branch of general know ledge. Whether he was a practising physician or not has been a matter of controversy. The conclusion supported by most evidence seems to be that he practised on his friends and dependants, but not as a remunerative profession. His well-known work, De Medicina, was one of a series of treatises intended to embrace all knowledge proper for a man of the world. It was not meant for the physicians, and was certainly little read by them, as Celsus is quoted by no medical writer, and when referred to by Pliny is spoken of as an author, not a physician. There is no doubt that his work is chiefly a compilation ; and Daremberg, with other scholars, has traced a large number of passages of the Latin text to the Greek originals from which they were translated. In the description of surgical operations the vagueness of the language seems sometimes to show that the author had not performed such himself; but in other parts, and especially in his historical introduction, he speaks with more confidence; and everywhere he compares and criticizes with learning and judgment. The whole body of medical literature belonging to the Hippocratic and Alexandrian times is ably summarized, and a knowledge of the state of medical science up to and during the times of the author is thus conveyed to us which can be obtained from no other source. The work of Celsus is thus for us only second in importance to the Hippocratic writings and the works of 803 Galen ; but it is valuable rather as a part of the history of medicine than, as the subject of that history. It forms no link in the general chain of medical tradition, for the simple reason that the influence of Celsus (putting aside a few scanty allusions in medieval times) commenced in the 15th century, when his works were first discovered in manu script or committi d to the press. Since then, however, he has been almost up to our own times the most popular and widely-read of all medical classics, partly fur the qualities already indicated, partly because he was one of the few of those classics accessible to readers of Latin, and partly also because of the purity and classical perfection of his language. Of Pliny, another encyclopaedic writer, a few words must be said, though he was not a physician. In hia Natural History we find as complete a summary of the popular medicine of his time as Celsus gives of the scientific medicine. Pliny disliked doctors, and lost no opportunity of depreciating regular medicine ; nevertheless he has left many quotations from, and many details about, medical authors which are of the highest value. He is useful to us for what he wrote about the history of medi cine, not for what he contributed. Like Celsus, he had little influence on succeeding medical literature or practice. We now come to the writer who, above all others, gathered up into himself the divergent and scattered threads of ancient medicine, and out of whom again the greater part of modern European medicine has flowed. Galen (see vol. i. 803 and x. 23) was a man furnished with all the anatomical, medical, and philosophical knowledge cf his time; he had studied all kinds of natural curiosities 5 , and had stood in near relation to important political events ; he possessed enormous industry, great practical sagacity, and unbounded literary fluency. He had, in fact, every quality necessary for an encyclopaedic writer, or even for a literary and professional autocrat. He found the medical profes sion of his time split up into a number of sects, medical science confounded under a multitude of dogmatic systems, the social status and moral integrity of physicians degraded. He appears to have made it his object to reform these evils, to reconcile scientific acquirements and practical skill, to bring back the unity of medicine as it had been understood by Hippocrates, and at the same time to raise the dignity of medical practitioners. Galen was as devoted to anatomical and, BO far as then understood, physiological research as to practical mediiine. He worked enthusiastically at dissection, though, the liberty of the Alexandrian schools no longer existing, he could dissect only animals, not the human body. In his anato mical studies Galen had a twofold object, a philosophical, to show the wisdom of the Creator in making everything fit to serve its purpose, and a practical, to aid the diagnosis, or recognition, of disease. The first led him into a teleological system so minute and overstrained as to defeat its own end ; the second was successfully attained by giving greater precision and certainty to medical and surgical practice in difficult cases. His general physiology was essentially founded upon the Hippocratic theory of the four elements, with which he combined the notion of spirit (pneuma) penetrating all parts, and mingled with the humours in different proportions. It was on this field that he most vehemently attacked the prevailing atomistic and materialistic views of the methodic school, and his conception of the pneuma became in some respects half metaphysical. His own researches in special branches of physiology were important, but do not strictly belong to our present subject. The application of physiology to the explanation of diseases, and thus to practice, was chiefly by the theory of the temperaments or mixtures which Galen founded upon