Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/153

 independent character of Asclepiades as it is revealed to us by the different writers of the history of medicine. In his comment upon this narrative the distinguished Viennese historian makes the remark that Asclepiades was very conceited, and—like most reformers—showed a disposition to ignore the work accomplished by his predecessors. He also expresses the belief that Asclepiades possessed a leaning toward the methods of the charlatan; the episode just narrated revealing a love for theatrical display in his professional activity. On the other hand, in the further course of the chapter which he devotes to this famous Roman physician, Neuburger gives fuller recognition to the value of the services which he rendered to medicine, and thus, in the light of these services, one is justified in overlooking any little weaknesses of character which he may have displayed. Perhaps the most important of the services which Asclepiades rendered was that of having introduced Greek medicine into Rome—an important connecting link in the transmission of medical knowledge from Greece to Modern Europe.

''The Views of Asclepiades with Regard to Physiology and Pathology.''—The human body, according to the philosophy of Asclepiades, is composed of atoms—that is, small bodies which are invisible, have no definable quality, are in continual motion, through mutual pressure undergo modifications in form, and break up into innumerable smaller fragments or particles that differ both in size and in shape. The arrangement of these small bodies is such that intercommunicating spaces or pores are left between them, and through these channels flows a sap or juice containing larger and smaller particles; the larger ones composed of blood, and the smaller of vapor or heat. Health, according to Asclepiades, is that state in which the primitive atoms are properly distributed or placed and the flow of the juices in the pores takes place normally. When, however, the flow is arrested and the primitive atoms are disordered in their relations to each other and to the pores, or when the elements composing the fluid contents of the latter become mixed, disease results. Alterations in the