1 The Birth of Science - MSRI

5.5 Development and End of Scientific Medicine 135
pecially in choosing single fields of specialization. For example, Demetrius
of Apamea studied especially the sexual organs, shifting in this area the
focus of interest, which under Herophilus had been the description of reproductive
physiology, to the treatment of ailments. Mantias, another important
representative of the school, was probably the greatest pharma- page 177
cologist of Antiquity: it seems he was the first person to prepare, describe
and classify medicines obtained by combining several ingredients. 46
The continuing vitality of the Herophilean school in the first century
A.D. is attested by the work of one of its last representatives, Demosthenes
Philalethes. This physician, though having written a work on the theory
of heartbeats, devoted himself primarily to ophthalmology. The forty passages
in which he is mentioned ascribe to him the study and cure of more
than forty infirmities of the eye, from sties to glaucoma, many of which
still maintain in all likelihood the names he gave them. The written works
of Demosthenes Philalethes remained the foundation of knowledge about
the eye throughout the Middle Ages.
After the first century A.D. the Herophilean school dies out. The ensuing
methodological decadence, already mentioned in connection with
Galen, is even more obvious in another of the best physicians of the imperial
period, Rufus Ephesius. In his treatise On the naming of the parts of the
human body, a source of invaluable testimonia on Herophilus, he scrupulously
reports all the anatomical terms he knows, together with their origins.
But Rufus’ terminology is particularly exuberant regarding inessential
features, such as facial hair; 47 this is a clear consequence of a passive
attitude toward the terminology under discussion, which becomes very
rich precisely in the case of parts of the body that, like the beard, are mentioned
every day. Rufus not only makes no attempt to standardize this
nomenclature by narrowing down the use of ambiguous terms; he even
criticizes some terms coined by Alexandrian scientists as being the creation
of “Egyptian physicians” with an inadequate mastery of Greek. 48
Other imperial-age physicians, too, often quibble with Herophilus’ language,
whose creativity they can no longer grasp. Caelius Aurelianus, for page 178
instance, in the same passage where he reports the Herophilean description
of a mental case, has deliratio and alienatio as Latin counterparts of
two words used by Herophilus in his pioneer work on psychiatry, but be-
46 However, Plutarch states that medicines obtained by combining plant, animal and mineral ingredients
had been made by Erasistratus, who called them “the hands of the gods” (Quaestionum
convivalium libri vi, 663C). This is an example of how traditions about the Herophilean and Erasistratan
schools merged.
47 Rufus Ephesius, De nominatione partium hominum, 139, 8 ff.
48 Rufus Ephesius, De nominatione partium hominum, 151, 1 ff.
Revision: 1.9 Date: 2002/09/14 19:12:01