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IN ALEXANDRIA. 77
information, but should look upon experience alone as really
important* STOB^US relates that HEROPHILOS answered
the question, who is the best doctor, thus : " He wdio knows
how to distinguish the possible from the impossible."f
His contemporary ERASISTRATOS who participated with
him in the fame won by the school of Alexandria
derived his origin from Iulis in the island of Keos.
He too had been taught by CHRYSIPPOS of Knidos:
in addition to him METRODOROS, the son-in-law of
ARISTOTLE, is mentioned among his teachers. ERASIS­
TRATOS lived for a long time at the court of the King
SELEUKOS NlKATOR where he achieved distinction by a
remarkable diagnosis. ANTIOCHOS, the son of the King,
was ill and ERASISTRATOS recognized by the agitation
which he manifested at the sight of his stepmother that his
disease had been occasioned by the hopeless love he bore
her.J GALEN makes the humorous remark, touching this
story, that he is unable to understand the foundation for
this diagnosis, for " there is no such thing as a lover's
pulse."§ Like HEROPHILOS, ERASISTRATOS was very
diligent in anatomical investigations. He described the
convolutions of the brain and considered the greater
intricacy of these in man as compared with brutes to be
the cause of the intellectual preponderance of the former
over the latter. [| He distinguished the motor from the
sensory nerves, but thought that the former arose from, the
membranes, and the latter from the substance, of the brain.!
He recognized the bronchial arteries, assumed an anatomical
connection by anastomosis between the arteries and the
veins and described the valves of the heart so accurately
that GALEN was unable to add anything to his description.**
* PLINIUS: Hist. Nat. xxvi, 6.
t STABJEUS : Elorileg: Ed. A. Meinecke iv, 2.
t PLUTARCH : Vita Demetrii, c. 38. —PLINIUS : Hist. Nat. xxix, 3.
§ GALEN op. cit. T. xiv, 631.
|| GALEN op. cit. T. iii, 673.
^f RUFUS op. cit. p. 185.
** GALEN op. cit. iii, 465, 492. v, 166.