Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 79.djvu/227

Rh 5. The Methodist School was founded by Asclepiades (B.C. 128-56) and his pupil Themison. It was an application of the atomic philosophy of Leucippus and Democritus to medicine, holding that vital and morbid phenomena depended on the movements of atoms or particles through pores in the body. The methodist doctrines exerted a strong influence on medical thought for many centuries.

6. The Pneumatic System, about A.D. 70 to 160, was founded and chiefly represented by Athenæus of Attalia. Its pathology was based on an aerial or gaseous principle.

7. The Eclectics, who date from about 50 A.D., had no common or distinctive views, but individually developed widely differing systems. Among them were included some of the most eminent physicians of antiquity. Aretæus (about 30-90 A.D.) was one of the earliest and most distinguished. Two other eminent writers of about that period deserve mention, namely, Celsus (about 30 B.C. to 50 A.D.), a brilliant encyclopedic writer on medicine, and Dioscorides (40-90 A.D.), who wrote a treatise on materia medica which remained an authority almost to modern times.

The greatest of the Eclectics was Claudius Galen (about 131-206 A.D.), of Pergamus and Rome. He received an exhaustive education at Pergamus (in Asia Minor), and other educational centers, and especially at Alexandria. He was a most prolific writer, not only on medicine but on other subjects, his works numbering between three and four hundred. He made important and extensive original contributions on anatomy and pharmacology. In internal medicine his system to a considerable extent was a revival and amplification of the doctrines of Hippocrates. So powerful was his influence that for nearly fifteen centuries Hippocrates and Galen continued the main authorities and basis of medicine.

Prom about the second century B.C. Greece and the entire civilized world of that time had come under Roman dominion; but though the political administration was Roman the culture and civilization of the Roman Empire was of Greek origin and character. The early medicine of the Romans was very crude, consisting mainly of superstitious observances under the auspices of soothsayers and priests; and there was no important Roman addition to medical knowledge. Later, Greek medicine and practitioners were introduced among the Romans, and prevailed until the fall of the Empire. Asclepiades (B.C. 128-56), the founder of the methodist school, was one of the main agents in establishing Greek medicine in Rome. Alexandria was for centuries the greatest center and headquarters of learning and education of the ancient world; it contained a vast library and produced important systems of philosophy and medicine.

Subsequent to Galen medicine in the Roman Empire came to a