Page:Greek Biology and Medicine.djvu/118

 GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE cians only in gangrene as a subsidiary aid, seems, even in Alexandria, to have made no great progress; for Celsus also regarded it as a last sad resource in gangrene: yet by the time of Trajan, under Archigenes, amputation had become a recognized procedure for ulcers, growths, injuries and even deformities. The limb to be removed was bandaged to expel the blood, and a tourniquet was placed above the line of severance; or sometimes the chief blood-vessels were first cut down and tied, and the smaller tied or twisted, during the opera- tion — ' transfixing them with a sharp hook and twisting them round and round and clos- ing them by this twisting ' — a proceeding of which there is no trace in Hippocrates, nor apparently in the earlier Alexandria. These good methods were afterwards obliterated by the bad fashion of the searing-iron." ^^ From the side of philosophy as well as physiology, it is interesting to note how the Pneumatic School represents a stage in the mind's search for a vital principle to account for the living man, and more specifically to account for the animal heat, which is a clearly vital quality, and yet indicative of ill when- ever it rises above a certain degree, as in [96]