perience.
The freedom with which he follows or re-
jects earlier opinions has occasioned him to be classed by some among the Eclectic school. His work is divi- ded into— I, the causes and signs of (1) acute and (2) chronic diseases; and, II, the curative treatment of (1) I acute and (2) chronic diseases. His boldness of treat> ment is exeniplilied in his selection of the vein to b« opened in a wide range of parts — the arm. ankle, tongue, I nose, etc. He first has a distinct mention of leeches I w liich Themison is said to have introduced : and in this ; respect his surgical resources ai)pear to be in advance of Celsus. He was familiar with the operation for the stone in the bladder, and prescribes, as Celsus also docs, I the use of the catheter, where its insertion is not pre- vented bv inflammation, then the incision into the neck
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of the bladder, nearly as in modern lithotomy. His views of the internal economy were a strange mixture of truth and error, and the disuse of anatomy was no doubt the reason why this was the weak point of his teaching. He held that the work of producing the blood pertained to the liver, " which is the root of the veins ;" that the bile was distributed from the gall-blad- der to the intestines ; and, if this vesica became gorged, the bile was thrown back into the veins, and by them diffused over the system. He regarded the nerves as the source of sensation and motion ; and had some no- tion of them as branching in pairs from the spine. Thus he has a curious statement as regards paralysis, that in the case of any sensational point heloio the head, e. g. from the membrane of the spinal marrow being affected injuriously, the parts on the right side will be paralyzed if the nerve towards the right side be hurt, and simi- larly, conversely, of the left side ; but that if the head itself be so affected, the inverse law of consequence holds concerning the parts related, since each nerve passes over to the other side from that of its origin, decussating each other in the form of the letter X. The doctrine of the Pneuma, or ethereal principle existing in the micro- cosm by which the mind performs all the functions of the bod}^, holds a more prominent position in the works of Aretseus than in those of any of the other authorities (Dr. Adams's Preface to Aret. p. x, xi). He was aware that the nervous function of sensation was distinct from the motive power; that either might cease .and the other continue. His pharmacopoeia is copious and rea- sonable, and the Umits of the usefidness of this or that drug are laid down judiciously. He makes large use of wine, and prescribing the kind and the number of cyathi to be taken ; and some words of his on stomach disor- ders (jTipi KapdiaXyitjo) forcibly recall those of Paul to Timothy (1 Tim. v, 23), and one might almost suppose them to have been suggested by the intenser spirituality of his Jewish or Christian patients. " Such disorders," he says, "are common to those who toil in teaching, whose yearning is after divine instruction, who despise delicate and varied diet, whose nourishment is fasting, and whose drink is water." As a purge of melancholy, he prescribes " a little wine, and some other more liberal sustenance." In his essay on causiis, or " brain" fever, he describes the powers acquired by the soul before dis- solution in the following remarkable words : " Every sense is pure, the intellect acute, the gnostic powers prophetic ; for they prognosticate to themselves in the first place their own departure from life ; then they fore- tell what will afterwards take place to those' present, who fancy sometimes that they are delirious : but these persons wonder at the result of what has been said. Others also talk to certain of the dead, perchance they alone perceiving them to be present, in virtue of their acute and pure sense, or perchance from their soul see- ing beforehand, and announcing the men with whom they are about to associate. For formerly they were immersed in humors, as if in mud and darkness ; but when the disease has drained these off, and taken away the mist from their eyes, they perceive those things which are in the air, and, through the soul being unen- cumbered, become true prophets." To those who wish further to pursue the study of medicine at this sera, the edition of Aretasus by the Sydenham Society, and in a less degree that by Boerhaave (Lugd. Bat. 1735), to which the references have here been made, may be rec- ommended.
As the general science of medicine and surgery of this period may be represented by Aretseus, so we have nearly a representation of its Materia Medica by Dios- corides. He too was of the same general region — a Cilician Greek — and his first lessons were probably learnt at Tarsus. His period is tinged bj' the same uncertainty as that of Aretieus; but he has usually been assigned to the end of the first or beginning of the second century (see Smith, Diet, of Class. Biocj. s. v.). He was the first author of high mark who devoted his attention VI.— C