File:Science and literature in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (1878) (14784616773).jpg

Identifier: sciliteratur00jaco (find matches)
Title: Science and literature in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
Year: 1878 (1870s)
Authors: Jacob, P. L., 1806-1884
Subjects: Middle Ages Renaissance Science, Medieval Literature, Medieval
Publisher: London : Bickers and Son
Contributing Library: Getty Research Institute
Digitizing Sponsor: Getty Research Institute

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s! (Fig. 98.) After Aetius comes Alexander of Tralles, whose medical reputationwas very great in the sixth century. No Greek doctor since the days ofHippocrates had equalled him with regard to practical science, professionalsagacity, and literary merit. He had made himself acquainted with aU thefacts which had been observed and collated before his time; but he did notallow himself to become the slave of any scientific authority, or to be seducedby any doctrine, recognising no other guide than his own experience. Hepossessed to a supreme degree the art of diagnosis, and he laid down as aprinciple that no decision should be arrived at, as to the treatment of a case,until the specific and individual causes of the disease have been carefullysought out and considered. His views upon melancholia and gout, his dislikeof violent aperients and the abuse of opiimi, his preference for laxatives incases of dysentery and for emetics in cases of intermittent fever, testify both MEDIC A r. SCIEXCES.
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,42 MEDICAL SCIENCES. to the independence and accuracy of his observations, and show that he knewhow to apply with advantage the most conflicting theories. He was the firstto resort to bleeding from the jugular vein, and to use iron filings in certainaffections of the blood. In the seventh century the Jewish doctors endeavoured to possess them-selves of the teaching of medicine in the East, forming at Damascus andConstantinople scientific assemblies, in which all real learning was lost in theobscurities of cabalism. The East, always a land of illusions and fancies, wasonly too accessible to the superstitious ideas implied in the magical andsupernatural treatment of disease. This mixture of error and truth isnowhere more noticeable than in the Koran, a compilation which is as muchscientific as it is religious, and to which doctors from the schools of Alex-andria and Dschoudisapour (the town founded by Sapor II.) must have con-tributed in the name of Mahomet, for this code of Islamism c

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