Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/133

 were spared to secure correct versions of the different works; the septuagint version of the books of the Old Testament of the Bible being a conspicuous example of what the Ptolemies accomplished in this direction during the third century B. C. Every possible facility was offered at the same time for the giving and receiving of instruction; and thus, with the immense library as a foundation of priceless value, the Museum at Alexandria became in every material respect a great university, the first one of which history gives us any fairly satisfactory information. Several years after the Museum library was established a second one of somewhat smaller proportions was organized in the Serapeum (Temple of Serapis). The example set by the Ptolemies was followed by Attalus, King of Pergamum in Mysia, Asia Minor (241 B. C.), and, before many years had elapsed, the great library of that city almost rivaled those of the Museum and Serapeum at Alexandria. It was the competition between these two royal collectors of books that led to the issuing of a decree that no more papyrus was to be exported from Egypt, and thus there was provided the stimulus which led to the discovery or invention of a new and better material on which books might be written—viz., Pergamentum (our parchment), a word coined from the name of the city in which it was invented.

The Development of Different Sects or Schools of Medicine.—Up to the time of the death of Hippocrates medicine maintained the character of a single organized and harmonious body; but, when this great physician had disappeared from the scene and was no longer there to guide the further development of medical science and to keep his followers working shoulder to shoulder with a single spirit and purpose, this hitherto homogeneous body split up into sects or schools, each of which had some favorite doctrine the promulgation of which seemed to each group of adherents to be of great importance. There were at first two such principal groups, viz., the Dogmatics and the Empirics. The former was composed of those who laid great stress upon speculation or theorizing,—that is,