PHILINUS OF COS, the reputed founder of the school, was a pupil of Herophilus, and lived in the third century B.C. He declared that all the anatomy his vivisecting master had taught him had not helped him in the least in the cure of his patients. He has been compared with Hahnemann.
SERAPION OF ALEXANDRIA was also of the third century B.C. He must not be confounded with the Arabian physician of this name. He wrote against Hippocrates. He discarded all hypotheses. He was the first to prescribe sulphur in chronic skin diseases; and he used some singular and disgusting remedies in his treatment. One of these was crocodiles’ dung, which in consequence became scarce and costly. GLAUCIAS, who invented the “Empiric Tripod,” ZEUXIS and HERACLIDES of Tarentum, lived about this period. The latter wrote commentaries on Hippocrates, and used opium to procure sleep. He mentions strangulated hernia in one of his treatises.
Many commentaries were written about this time on Hippocrates; and the art of pharmacy, especially the preparation of poisons, was much studied in the second century B.C. Botanic gardens were established, and men began to experiment with antidotes for poisons. “Mithridaticum,” so called after MITHRIDATES THE GREAT OF PONTUS, was a famous antidote which was used even to recent times. NICANDER OF COLOPHON wrote poems on poisons, and antidotes, leeches, and emetics for the first time appeared in poetry, and the symptoms of opium and lead-poisoning were not beneath the attention of the muse. ATTALUS III., king of Pergamos, was in constant fear of being poisoned, says Plutarch,[423] amused himself with planting poisonous herbs, not only henbane and hellebore, but hemlock, aconite, and dorycnium. He cultivated these in the royal gardens, gathered them at the proper seasons, and studied their properties and the qualities of their juices and fruits.
Cleopatra is said by Baas[424] to have written a work on the diseases of parturient and lying-in women, etc. She paid special attention, it would seem, to maladies of a specific character.
Le Clerc gives a list of the women who have exercised the profession of medicine in ancient times.[425]
CLEOPATRA treated the diseases of women. ARTEMISIA, Queen of Caria, ISIS, CYBELE, LATONA, DIANA, PALLAS, ANGITA, MEDEA, CIRCE, POLYDAMNA, AGAMEDA, HELEN, ŒNONE, HIPPO, OCRYOE, EPIONE, ERIOPIS, HYGEIA, ÆGLE, PANACEA, JASO, ROME, and ACESO are the ladies of classic story who had more or less acquaintance with medicine for good or evil purposes. That women, subject to many disorders for which in any state of society their natural modesty would make it difficult for them to consult men, should become proficient in the treatment of complaints which are peculiar to their sex, is the most natural thing in the world, and it is probable that very much of our knowledge of the treatment of these cases may be due to feminine wisdom. An ancient law of the Athenians forbade women and slaves to exercise the art of medicine, so that even midwifery, which they considered a branch of it, could only be practised by men. Some Athenian ladies preferred to die rather than be attended by men in their confinements. Women acted as accoucheuses in Egypt, Greece, and Rome, and some of them in classic times wrote books on medicine. Ætius gives some fragments in his works from a doctress named ASPASIA.