tures given above, evinces how imperfect must ha been Galen's knowledge of the course of the blo through the aorta.

An admirer of Plato and Aristotle whose doctrines he would have attempted to reconcile, he was, the strenuous opponent of the Epicureans. After a burst of indignation against all who would place their supreme good in the gratification of their own will, he exclaims: "Why should I waste words on such men! Others of nobler understanding might well censure me for thus perverting the sacred attribute of speech, which ought to be reserved for composing hymns in adoration of the Author of our being. I hold true piety to consist, not in sacrificing to him hecatombs of bulls, or in burning incense of cassia, or of hundreds of fragrant ointments, to his honor; but rather in ascertaining for myself, and in teaching to others, something of his wisdom, his goodness, and his power. I hold it to be the most convincing evidence of his goodness, that he has supplied every creature with what is most convenient for its use, and that all are supported by his bounty. On this account it becomes us to celebrate his goodness with hymns of praise. We see, as evidence of his consummate wisdom, that he has chosen the means most appropriate for accomplishing his own designs. And seeing that he has created all things agreeably to his own will, we have evidence of his almighty power."*

Many of the minor works ascribed to Galen may have been composed in his earlier years; but most of

* De Usu Partium, lib. iii. cap. 10, vol. iii. p. 237.

those upon which his fame reposes were written after his recall to Rome. Some portion of his writings, among these the two books of Anatomical Administrations which he had composed after the method of Marinus, were consumed during the conflagration of the temple of Peace and the destruction of his own dwelling; other parts have perished since his death. Yet we have now in print. and assigned to him, eighty-two treatises, the genuineness of which is undisputed; eighteen upon which the critics are not so well agreed; nineteen fragments, more or less voluminous; and eighteen commentaries on Hippocrates. To which should be added nearly forty treatises or fragments of treatises still extant in manuscript. His works now wholly lost, are supposed to amount to one hundred and sixty; about fifty of which were on medical subjects. He was also known as a philosophical writer; and to have devoted a portion of his labors to grammar and mathematics.

The works most highly esteemed in the Galenical collection, are the Administrationes Anatomica, De Usu Partium Corporis Humani, De Locis Affectis, Methodus Medendi, another treatise on the same subject addressed to Glauco, De Prænotione, Ars Medica, and, if really his, the work entitled Medicus or Introductio, which by some critics has been ascribed to Herodotus, one of his immediate predecessors. Worthy to be associated with the foregoing are the treatises: De Ossibus, De Elementis, De Temperamentis, De Atrabile, De Facultatibus Naturalibus, An in Arteriis Natura Sanguis

Contineatur, De Præsagatione ex Pulsibus, De Simplicum Medicamentorum Temperamentis et Facultatibus, De Compositione Medicamentorum, De Curandi Ratione per Venæ Sectionem, De Sanitate Tuenda, Quod Animi Mores Corporis Temperamenta Sequantur, De Foetuum Formatione, and a few others.

In the first of the works cited above, we are told of the few occasions enjoyed by the ancients for acquiring correct anatomical knowledge. The first five books of this treatise are occupied in describing the muscles, many of which are here mentioned for the first time. In connection with the muscular system he speaks of the blood-vessels. In the sixth book are described the organs of digestion; in the seventh, the heart; in the eighth, the respiratory organs; in the ninth, the brain and spinal marrow; and in the six remaining books, which have perished, he treated of the eye, the tongue, the pharynx, the larynx, the os hyoides, the history of the arteries and veins, the cerebral and spinal nerves, and the organs of generation. Many facts incorporated in this important production have been claimed to be the discoveries of later times.

The treatise De Usu Partium, written soon after his return to Rome, is also replete with anatomical details, interspersed with physiological opinions; but is rather a dissertation on final causes than a strictly anatomical performance: the author's main object being to disprove the doctrines of Epicurus and demonstrate the existence of a superintending Providence, from the wonderful adaptation of

means to ends in the organization of the human frame. In this admirable discourse is found that eloquent exposition of the powers and uses of the human hand, the leading thought of which may have been borrowed from Anacreon, but upon which no subsequent writer has been able to improve. And here, too, are found those hymns to the Deity, and other pious ejaculations, so worthy of the philosopher and moralist. This work is in seventeen books, and has been preserved entire.

The treatise De Locis Affectis in six books, was the work of his maturer years. In this, with wonderful sagacity he points out every part of the body subject to pains, convulsions, paralysis, or other symptoms; and to which our attention should be directed for investigating into the causes of disease. This valuable treatise, which is occupied mainly with pathology and symptomatology, the learned Haller held in higher estimation than any other of Galen's works.

The Ars Medica was for many centuries the textbook upon which the students of Salernum, and other schools of the middle ages, were examined before receiving permission to practice. Commencing with the definition of medicine, it treats of the signs of health, of the temperaments generally, and of their influence on special organs in health and disease. It next treats of the signs of disease-general and local, of prognostic indications, of the causes of disease, of the means of preserving health and of restoring it when disordered; thus furnish

ing in small compass an exposition of the whole of Galen's system of medicine.

The Methodus Medendi, in fourteen books, was the work of his old age, and was held by his followers in nearly the same estimation as the Ars Medica. The two books, on the same subject, addressed to Glauco, treat mostly of generalities. More information, it has been said, may be obtained from this work than from the whole medical literature of the Arabians. Galen, as before remarked, frequently refers incidentally to his own history, particularly in the Administrationes Anatomicæ, Ars Medica, De Usu Partium, De Locis Affectis, De Præcognitione ad Epigenem, De Antidotis, De Theriaca ad Pisonem, and in a work of his later years entitled De Propriorum Animi cujusque Adfectuum Dignotione et Curatione.

His original investigations were chiefly in the department of anatomy. In this he made many discoveries, mostly in the muscular system. But from the manner of treating the subject, it is difficult to determine precisely how much of his anatomical knowledge was derived from his own researches, and how much from the labors of his predecessors. He was the first to describe the popliteal muscle, the platysma myoides, the sterno and thyro hyoidei, and probably many others. In angiology he was not much in advance of the early Alexandrians. Like them, he placed the origin of the veins in the liver, of the arteries in the heart. He was familiar with the anastomoses of the two