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IN ALEXANDRIA. 75
Academies. In friendly intercourse and in free conversation
they discussed the scientific questions which had been
suggested to them by reading or observation. Their princely
patrons took a stirring interest in their investigations and
encouraged them by large stipends and rich presents. They
busied themselves with grammar, with criticizing the texts
of the manuscripts contained in the libraries, with the art
of poetry, with music, history, philosophy, mathematics,
mechanics, astronomy, geography, the natural sciences, and
medicine. But these " priests of the Muses," as THEOKRITOS
calls them,* did not live only for research : they devoted their
time also to teaching. Students from all countries inhabited
by Greeks came to Alexandria in order to obtain there the
best instruction for their future professions. The Museum
and Serapeum were thus not only academies but also high
schools. Information is unfortunately wanting concerning
the relation of these to the institutions which served the
purpose of teaching medicine.
Two medical schools arose in Alexandria founded by
different persons but alike, or nearly so, in the scientific
principles guiding them. Both took their stand on the
doctrines of the schools of Kos and Knidos and made the
scientific acquisitions of these the foundations for their own
investigations. At the head of one was HEROPHiLOSf and
of the other ERASISTRATOS.
The former was born about the year 300 B.C. at Chalcedon.
His teachers were CHRYSIPPOS of Knidos who made himself
remarkable for rejecting the too frequent employment of
blood-letting and drastic medicines, who tried to set limbs by
bandaging and who recommended -J vapour baths in dropsy,
and PRAXAGOROS of Kos one of the most copious medical
writers of that period.§ HEROPHILOS attained to such
importance that no less than four doctors of ancient times
* Idyll, xvii, v. 112.
t K. T. H. MARX: Herophilus, Karlsruhe und Baden 1838.
X GALEN op. cit. T. iv., 495. xi, 148, 230, 252.
§ C. G. KUHN : De Praxagora Coo. progr., Lips. 1823.