Page:Greek Biology and Medicine.djvu/116

 GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE and other relaxing or invigorating measures as the case seemed to require. Expressing his own opinion, Celsus decides for a middle course, whereby medicine should rely upon experience rationally: let one treat the evident causes of the disease, and as for the remote, meditate on them. Students should learn anatomy from the bodies of the dead and from study of living and wounded men. The surgical portions of Celsus's handbook are particularly good. Theories sat rather lightly on these excellent practitioners of the Greco-Roman time, who might call themselves by one name or another. This remark applies to members of the so- called " Pneumatic " School, who were gen- erally eclectic, adopting the best features of medical practice in the second half of the first century. They were affected by the Stoic physics, in which borrowed materials filled out a system novel in form. Accepting the old working elements, they found the life-giving principle to be the " Pneuma," like unto air and breath. It is innate, yet constantly re- newed through breathing, and circulates with the blood through the arteries and veins to all parts of the body, — the arteries conveying [94]