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80 ANCIENT TIMES..
.—. *
real knowledge concerning phenomena and that probability
is the highest limit that.,human understanding can reach.
They thus resigned themost beautiful hopes which have
animated scientific effort, and pronounced such effort to be
without prospect. The Empirics neglected anatomy and
physiology, declaring the study of them to be superfluous
and unfruitful; they did not concern themselves at all
about the essential nature of diseases but were satisfied
with observing their symptoms, discovering their immediate
causes, seeking remedies and trying which appeared
adapted to effect a cure. In this they allowed themselves to
be guided chiefly by experience and moreover did not confine
themselves to consulting their own previous observations
but also had, regard to those which had been made by others
and which in course of time had become historical. When...'
they met with previously unknown symptoms a course of
treatment was adopted which had been found to be useful *
in cases of a somewhat similar character. In thus adding
the decision per analogiam to that by experience and that*
by history they completed the so-called empiric tripod.
The Empirics gave their attention chiefly to practical
medical science. Materia medica, midwifery and surgery.;
were by them essentially improved. The method of performing
lithotomy, as described by CELSUS, we owe to them.,
Even the first attempts at lithotrity, which were undertaken 1 1
by AMMONlOS, date from this period.* Materia medica was
enriched by the works of NlKANDER and of KRATEVAS
who dedicated his book upon the medicinal properties of
drugs, which was furnished with coloured drawings, to
King MITHRIDATES of Pontos. Besides these, PHILINOS
a pupil of HEROPHILOS, SERAPION, GLAUKIAS and. HERAr
KLIDES of Tarantum were among the well-known representatives
of the Empiric sect.f While the sciences in-
* CELSUS vii, 26.
f CH. DAREMBERG (Histoire des sciences medicales, Paris 1870, T. i, p. 159)
has arranged in chronological order, beside one another, the adherents of this*
and of the two dogmatic schools in Alexandria.