Page:Greek Biology and Medicine.djvu/117

 PROGRESS IN ANATOMY more pneuma, and the veins more blood. Pneuma vivifies the body, and makes it a living unity, carries on the energies of growth and reproduction, as well as of sensation, de- sire, and thought. The normal condition and proper tovos or tension of the pneuma means health, and this is indicated by the pulse; while sickness springs from disorder of the pneuma, due to irregularities of the warm and cold or dry and moist elements, and the conse- quent morbid excess of one or the other of the humors. While these " Pneumatics " rejected the fundamental theory of the Methodists, they availed themselves of their treatment of dis- ease, and drew upon all the best medical knowledge of the time. They were wise physicians, following many a precept of Hip- pocrates, and efficient surgeons. One among them, Archigenes, a contemporary of Trajan, seems to have been extraordinarily resourceful and inventive: "what we need is to be fertile in expedients, not to be always attending to the writings of other people," said he. Says Sir Clifford Allbutt: "The ancient Greeks shrank from mutilation; and amputa- tion, mentioned by the Hippocratean physi- [95]