Page:The Hunterian oration delivered in the theatre of the Royal College of Surgeons in London, on the fourteenth of February, 1833 (IA b21911952).pdf/10

10 may be dated the origin of the three several departments of the profession.

The exact extent, or the precise course of Medical study, reeommended or required in the school of Alexandria, we have now no means of determining. It is, however, suffici- eutly evident that it soon gave a new impulse to en- quiry, an inereased desire for information. ‘The spirit with whieh opinions were formed, and the earnest anxiety dis- played in maintaining them, were sufficiently manifested in the eonduet of SErspion, the founder of the Empiric Sect; a sect that was well supported by talent, and long continued to flourish. While those who took up the op- posite side of the question, formed a second, the Dog- matie or rational seet. The first, admitting only one general method of acquiring skill in the Medical art, that of expe- rience, a knowledge derived from the evidence of sense; the second, asserting the necessity for knowing the latent, as well as evident causes of disease, and contending that a physician ought to understand the natural actions and functions of the human body, which necessarily pre-supposes an acquaintance with the internal parts.

Athird sect, the Methodie, was founded by THEMsoN, the disciple of AscteriapEs; who maintained, that the ex- amination of the causes of complaints, recommended by the Dogmatics, was useless, and the laborious observations of the Empiries, unnecessary; for that the whole art of Medicine might be taught ina few months. He considered that all �