shrewdness and ability, he was equipped with great powers of self-advertisement, and could cajole the rich and influential. He was an adept in the art of flattery. Galen often refers to him, and always with contempt. Thessalus was able, so he said, to teach the medical art in six months, and he surrounded himself with a retinue of artisans, weavers, cooks, butchers, and so on, who were allowed to kill or cure his patients. Sprengel states that, after the time of Thessalus, the doctors of Rome forbore to take their pupils with them on professional visits.

He began a method of treatment for chronic and obstinate cases. The first three days of the treatment were given up to the use of vegetable drugs, emetics, and strict dietary. Then followed fasting, and finally a course of tonics and restoratives. He is said to have used colchicum for gout. The tomb of Thessalus on the Appian Way was to be seen in Pliny's time. It bore the arrogant device Conqueror of Physicians." The success of Thessalus seems a proof of the cynical belief that the public take a man's worth at his own estimate.

Pliny, the elder, lived from A.D. 23 to 79, dying during the eruption of Vesuvius when Pompeii and Herculaneum were destroyed. He was not a scientific man, but but was a prodigious recorder of information on all subjects. Much of this information is inaccurate, for he

was not able to discriminate between the true and the false, or to assign to facts their relative value.

His great book on Natural History includes many subjects that cannot properly be considered as belonging to Natural History. It consists of thirty-six books and an index, and the author stated that the work dealt with twenty thousand important matters, and was compiled from two thousand volumes.

He

Although Pliny was not a physician he writes about medicine, and paints a picture of the state of medical knowledge of his time. His own opinions on the subject are of no value. believed that magic is a branch of medicine, and was optimistic enough to hold that there is a score of remedies for every disease. His writings upon the virtues of medicines derived from the human body, from fish, and from plants are more picturesque than accurate.

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CHAPTER VIII.

THE FIRST AND SECOND CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA.

Athenæus-Pneumatism-Eclectics-Agathinus-AretausArchigenes Dioscorides-Cassius Felix-Pestilence in Rome Ancient surgical instruments HerodotusHeliodorus - Cælius Aurelianus Soranus Rufus of

Ephesus-Marinus-Quintus.

Athenæus, of Cilicia, a Stoic and Peripatetic, founded in Rome the sect of the Pneumatists about the year A.D. 69. It was inspired by the philosophy of Plato. The pneuma, or spirit, was in their opinion the cause of health and of disease. They believed that dilatation of the arteries drives onward the pneuma, and contraction of the arteries drives it in a contrary direction. The pneuma passes from the heart to the arteries. Their theories also had reference to the elements. Thus, the union of heat and moisture maintains health; heat and dryness cause acute diseases; cold and moisture cause chronic diseases; cold and dryness cause mental depression, and at death there are both dryness and coldness. In spite of these strange opinions the Pneumatists made. some scientific progress, and recognized some diseases hitherto unknown. Galen wrote of the Pneumatists: "They would rather betray their country than abjure their opinions."

The founder

of the sect of Pneumatists was a very prolific writer, for the twenty-ninth volume of one of his works is quoted by Oribasius. The teaching of the Pneumatists speedily gave way to that of the Eclectics, of whom Galen was by far the most celebrated. They tried to reconcile the teaching of the Dogmatists, Methodists, and Empirics, and adopted what they considered to be the best teaching of each sect. The Eclectics were very similar to, if not identical with, the Episynthetics, founded by a pupil of Athenæus, by name, Agathinus. He was a Spartan by birth. He is frequently quoted by Galen, but none of his writings are extant.

Aretaus, the Cappadocian, practised in Rome in the first century of our era, in the reign of Nero or Vespasian. He published a book on medicine, still extant, which displays a great knowledge of the symptoms of disease very accurately described, and reliable for purposes of diagnosis. He was the first to reveal the glandular nature of the kidneys, and for the first time employed cantharides as a counter-irritant (Portal, vol. i, p. 62). It is not surprising that Aretæus followed rather closely the teaching of Hippocrates, but he considered it right to check some of "the natural actions" of the body, which Hippocrates thought were necessary for the restoration of health. He was not against phlebotomy, and used strong purgatives and also narcotics. He was less tied to the opinions of any sect than the physicians of his time, and was both

wonderfully accurate in his opinions and reliable in treatment. Aretæus condemned the operation of tracheotomy first proposed by Asclepiades, and held "that the heat of the inflammation becomes greater from the wound and contributes to the suffocation, and the patient coughs; and even if he escapes this danger, the lips of the wound do not unite, for both are cartilaginous and unable to grow together." He believed, also, that elephantiasis was contagious. The writings of Aretæus consist of eight books, and there have been many editions in various languages. Only a few chapters are missing.

Archigenes was a pupil of Agathinus, and is mentioned by Juvenal. He was born in Syria and practised in Rome in the reign of Trajan, A.D. 98-117. He introduced new and very obscure terms into his writings. He wrote on the pulse, and on this Galen wrote a commentary. He also proposed a classification of fevers, but his views on this subject were speculative theories, and not based upon practical experience and observation. To him is due the credit of suggesting opium for the treatment of dysentery, and he also described accurately the symptoms and progress of abscess of the liver. By some authorities he is thought to have belonged to the sect of the Pneumatici.

Dioscorides was the author of a famous treatise on Materia Medica. At different times there were several physicians of this name. He lived shortly after Pliny in the first century, but there is some