Volume 1

The homœopathic theory and practice of medicine / by E.E. Marcy and F.W. Hunt.

  • Marcy, E. E. (Erastus Edgerton), 1815-1900.
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The homœopathic theory and practice of medicine / by E.E. Marcy and F.W. Hunt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of distant climates, stimulating the curiosity of naturalists and physi- cians. Medicine was now divided into three branches, the dietetic, the pharmaceutic, and the chirurgic; these branches became entirely distinct and were cultivated by different individuals. Anatomy and Physiology now received a new impetus in the efforts of Herophilus and Erasistratus, who commenced the dissection of the human body and the vivisection of animals at Alexandria. About 287 B. C. Serapion of Alexandria formed a new sect called the empirical. He retained the practice of Hippocrates; but despising his mode of reasoning, depended on personal experience alone. His followers used Castor, Opium, Cicuta and Henbane. Those who maintained the value of theories were afterwards known as dogmatists; they insisted on the necessity of knowing the latent as well as the evident causes of disease; and taught that physicians should understand the natural actions and functions of the body. At this period there were medical schools of some importance at Smyrna, Pergamus, and Epidaurus, all of which attracted students, and were visited by distinguished pupils from Alexandria. At Rome the study and practice of Medicine remained entirely un- known for more than six hundred years after the founding of the city. {Pliny, Liber 39. Chap. 1.) Though the usual efforts of ignorant men to mitigate pain must have been made, there was no class of men who devoted themselves to the treatment of diseases alone. The people had faith in the priests and oracles, and the mystical responses of the Cumaean Sibyl were particularly reverenced. jEneid., Lib. VL 78.) According to Livy, the Roman historian, the medical and religious sciences of the Grreeks were introduced at Rome 234 years B. C. Fifteen years afterwards Ai'chagatus, son of Lysanias of the Pelopones- sus, settled in the Eternal City as a physician and surgeon. The practice of surgery was considered incompatible with kindness and humanity, and the Romans were deeply prejudiced against everything from Greece; hence all the Grreek colonists in Italy were regarded with envy or hatred by the people; and Marcus Porcius Cato, the Censor, particularly distinguished himself in his hatred of physicians, {Cor- nelius Agrijypa, Arts and Sciences, p. 297) and he even meditated the expulsion of every man from Rome who should attempt to practice there. For a century more no 'distinguished physician appears in that city, till Asclepiades of Bythinia (born 91, B. C), who, having failed as a teacher of rhetoric at Rome, took up the practice of Medicine, at a comparatively late period of life. He at once openly opposed Hippocrates' theory of natural power and sympathy or attraction, and engrafted upon his science the physical principles of the Epicurean phTlosophy. By the general condemnation of the practice of his co- temporaries, and the disparaging manner in which he spoke of all the