Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

3rd. When yellow bile gains admission, it is erysipelatous. 4th. When phlegm, it is scirrhous or cancerous.

Galen's greatest innovation was the introduction of the indications afforded by the pulse; and his chapters, or rather treatises, upon the pulse, are wonderful examples of perverse ingenuity. He gives tables of the various kinds of pulse, as, for example,

1. Long, broad, high, large;

2. Long, broad, moderate;

3. Long, broad, low (humilis);

4. Long, moderate, high;

5. Long, moderate, moderate, slender;

and so on, enumerating twenty-seven varieties of this quality alone-that is, of the sensation of the movement in respect to its fulness.

Then we have another table

1. Quick, quick, slow;

2. Quick, quick, quick;

3. Quick, quick, moderate, &c.,—

also extending to twenty-seven varieties in respect to the rapidity of its beat. Besides the fulness, strength, and rate, there are a multitude of other distinctions which it has been found almost impossible to translate, such as caprizans, or jumping like a goat.' Of the reality of these nominal differences there is no doubt; but the objection to this attempt to tabulate them in the way Galen has done, is, that no two physicians would agree whether to call a pulse "long, broad, large," or "long, broad, moderate." If these qualities were fixed by a dynamometer, then such tables would have at least an objective and positive foundation to begin with, instead of a merely-arbitrary one. The pulse is, undoubtedly, a most important index of the state of the health; but it requires the cultivated tact of long experience to interpret its signification. It cannot be

1 De Different. Puls. Lib. I.

A.D. 200.

read off like a gasometer. never was mistaken in his prognosis. If this be true, it was owing to his extensive practice, not to such compilations of dubious indications as he presents us with in these chapters. Were it so, there would have been reason in the question of Martial, possibly put ironically, but reported as a compliment, "How does it happen that my prognostications are not so good as yours? for I have read the prognostics of Hippocrates as well as you." Whether or not Galen possessed the wonderful gift of infallibility which he claims-" never having found himself wrong, with the help of God, in his prediction," (he seems to have been a Monotheist, though not a Christian)—it is quite certain that his practice of medicine had all the fatal faults of his idol Hippocrates, besides a large contingent due to himself. He arranged medicines according to what he called their "qualities," by which term he did not mean their action upon the body, but their inherent heat or coldness, dryness or moisture. Thus, a medicine was warm in the first, second, or third degree; and moist or dry in a similar ratio : so a medicine might be hot in the first and moist in the second degree, and if we met with a disease which was cold in the first and dry in the second degree, then we should administer to the subject of it this remedy.2 We shall best illustrate the working of this folly by a few quotations from Paulus Ægineta, who follows Galen and his school, and has left a volume on Materia Medica, from which we extract the following:

Galen used to vaunt that he

"Cistus (rock-rose).-It is an astringent shrub of gentlycooling powers. Its leaves and shoots are so desiccative as to agglutinate wounds; but the flowers are of a more drying nature, being about the second degree; and hence, when drunk, they cure dysenteries and all kinds of fluxes." 3

1 Comment. 2, in Lib. I. Quoted by Sprengel, Vol. II. p. 169.

2 De Facult. Simpl. Lib. V.

3 Paulus Ægineta. Vol. III. p. 74.

"Lapides (stones).—All kinds are desiccative, like earth, but the Homatitis, or blood-stone, is astringent and desiccative to a considerable degree, so that it agrees with trachoma of the eyelids," &c.'

What an extensive generalization -All stones-that is, all mineral substances are disposed of as dry, and may be used in moist diseases! Lead, antimony, arsenic, mercury, are interchangeable quantities, or what Galen would call "succedanea."

"Foeniculum (fennel) is heating in the third degree, and desiccative in the first; it therefore forms milk, and relieves suffusions of the eye." 2

"Ferrum (iron).-When frequently extinguished in water, it imparts a considerable desiccative power to it. When drunk, therefore, it agrees with affections of the spleen." 3 And so on.

Given a disease, determine its character as hot or cold, moist or dry, by an effort of imagination; having done so, select a remedy which has been catalogued as possessing opposite qualities. This is the famous principle of Galen

contraria contrariis curantur”-held in reverence among us to the present day. But Galen, besides treating diseases in this methodic way, was fond of nostrums, and used to purchase them for large sums. Indeed, his prescriptions bear a strong resemblance to those of itinerant quacks. For example, under the head of "dysentery," he gives for indiscriminate selection, according to taste, nine recipes, most of which are incorporated in the formulæ of Paulus Ægineta, of which the following are specimens:

"Of the ashes of snails, p. iv.; of galls, p. ii.; of pepper, p. i. Reduce to a fine powder, and sprinkle upon the condiments, or give to drink in water, or a white, watery wine."

1 Paulus Egineta. Vol. III. p. 220. Ibid. Vol. III. p. 242.

3 Ibid. Vol. III. p. 331.

These are compound remedies :

"The trochisk from Egyptian thorn, that of Philip, that from hartshorn, that from and the trigonis."

The pills from Macer are excellent remedies. The following is an admirable one :

"Of opium, of saffron, of Indian lycum, of acacia, of shumach, of frankincense, of galls, of hypocystis, of pomegranate-rind, of myrrh, of aloes, equal parts, give in water to the amount of three oboli." 1

So we enter the region of polypharmacy, which, although begun by Galen, did not reach its full extravagance till a later age.

1 Paulus Ægineta. Vol. I. p. 526.

« ForrigeFortsæt »