Herophilus and Erasistratus : a bibliographical demonstration in the Library of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, 16th March, 1893 / by James Finlayson.

Date:
1893
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Herophilus and Erasistratus : a bibliographical demonstration in the Library of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, 16th March, 1893 / by James Finlayson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    As already indicated, in one of his sayings, Erasistratus took what we would regard, now-a-days, as sensible views regarding the prevention of disorders by care in diet; and he equally approached modern views in condemning the miscel- laneous compounds which culminated in the awful medicinal mixtures described by Galen under the name of Theriaca. Probably, from seeing the abuse of opium, Pliny * tells us that he and Diagoras condemned it altogether as a most deadly thing, and would not allow that it should be so much as injected or infused into the body by way of clyster, for they held it no better than poison and otherwise hurtful to the eies. As regards purgatives and clysters, it was no doubt against the current abuse of them that Erasistratus protested, for Caelius Aurelianus tells us that although writing against them, he himself used them.-|- The Pharmacy of Erasistratus is referred to by Berendes in his book Die Pharmacie bei der alien Culturvolkern (1891), but only in a few lines. In Celsus we find a prescription spoken of as Aut Erasis- trati compositio aut Cratonis | and another Quae ad auctorem Erasistrati refertur. § One very similar to the last is quoted by Galen as Compositio Erasistrati. || With regard to the views of Erasistratus on Fevers, and other medical questions, the works of Le Clei'C and Sprengel must be referred to. * Pliny, Natural History, Book XX, chap, xix, Holland's translation, vol. ii, ]). 68. t Caelius Aurelianus, Morh. acut., Lib. Ill, cap. xvii: Temere Erasis- tratus secundo libro de ventre scribens culpans copiam atque acrimoniam clysterum, ab antiquis ordiuatam, ipse quoque utitur clystere ex nitro atque sale. J Celsus, De re medica, Lib. VI, cap. xviii. § Celsus, Be re medica, Lib. VI, cap. vii. II Galen, Kiihn's edition, Tom. XII, p. 735.