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MEDICINE IN ROME. 93
contain a multitude of extracts from medical works which
have been lost. The best known Encyclopaedists were
M. TERENTIUS VARRO, A. CORNELIUS CELSUS and the
elder PLINY. The last mentioned in writing his natural
history made use of not less than 2,000 books as he
himself relates* and CELSUS in his work on Medicine
which by its elegant expositions and classic language
ranks with the best examples of Roman literature, gives
us some, if insufficient, recompense for the great number
of medical works of the Alexandrian period of which an
envious fate has robbed us. Eclecticism developed into an
organic whole, instinct with life, uniting the advantages of
the other medical systems in itself without their deficiencies
and faults. Holding fast to the traditions of past ages but
free from that pedantry of the schoolmaster which regards
every departure from the beaten track as wanton risk, it
was admirably adapted to encourage activity in research
among individuals and to render possible the advance of
science. Eclecticism was a want,—a necessity,—for medical
science if it was not to be reduced to the dead level of rude
empiricism or one-sided methodism. It is thus easily comprehensible
that it obtained dominion in medicine. The
doctors attached themselves to it with enthusiasm and
medical literature received an eclectic colouring. Even
the teaching of GALEN which during fifteen centuries of
the history of the world passed in medical matters as the
highest and as an almost infallible authority was in its
origin nothing but a purified eclecticism. It certainly soon
obtained the power of standing alone and erected itself into
a compact system through the creative power of its founder,
who disclosed a crowd of facts to medical science and
opened for it new paths.
GALEN was born in the year 131 of our era at Pergamos the
future seat of government of the Attali. His father the architect
NlKON was an able and educated man who possessed
sound acquirements in mathematics, physics, and the natural
* PLINIUS op. cit. i, praef.