At the dismemberment of Alexander’s vast empire, after his death, the Egyptian portion fell to the share of Ptolemy Soter. It was this sovereign who founded the famous Alexandrian Library; a great patron of the arts and sciences, he placed this institution under the direction of Aristotle. He also established the Schools of Alexandria, and encouraged the dissection of the human body.
CHRYSIPPUS, the Cnidian, who lived in the fourth century _B.C._, was the father of the Chrysippus who was physician to Ptolemy Soter, and he was tutor to Erasistratus. Pliny says that he reversed the practice of preceding physicians in the most extraordinary manner. He would not permit bleeding, because the blood contains the soul; did not practise purging, though he sometimes permitted the use of enemata and emetics. He wrote on herbs and their uses, and drove the blood out of limbs previous to their amputation on the principles recently re-introduced by Esmarch. He introduced the use of vapour baths in the treatment of dropsy. As there were several physicians of the name of Chrysippus, and as their works are lost, it is very difficult to distinguish their maxims. Amongst the disciples of the Cnidian physician of this name were MEDIUS, ARISTOGENES, METRODORUS, and ERASISTRATUS, as we have said.
HEROPHILUS, of Chalcedon in Bithynia, a pupil of CHRYSIPPUS of Cnidos and PRAXAGORAS of Cos, was one of the most famous physicians of the ancient world. He was a great anatomist and physiologist, and a contemporary of the philosopher Diodorus Cronos, and of Ptolemy Soter in the fourth and third centuries B.C. He settled at Alexandria, which under Ptolemy I. became the most famous centre of the science of the ancient Greeks. Here Herophilus founded with other physicians of the city the great medical school which ultimately became distinguished above all others, so that a sufficient guarantee of a physician’s ability was the fact that he had received his education at Alexandria. The foundation of the Alexandrian School formed a great epoch in the history of medicine. The dissection of the human body was of the utmost importance to the healing art. While the practice was forbidden, it could only have been performed furtively and in a hasty and unsatisfactory manner. The science of anatomy, on which that of medicine to be anything but quackery must be founded, now took its proper place in the education of the doctor. The bodies of all malefactors were given over for the purposes of dissection.[409] Herophilus is accused of having also dissected alive as many as six hundred criminals. This fact has been denied by some of his biographers, and others have attempted to explain it away; but it is charged against him by Tertullian,[410] and Celsus mentions it[411] as though it were a well-known fact, and without the least suspicion that it was an unjust accusation.