The school of Smyrna, in which Erasistratus taught, was undoubtedly famous; but there is reason to' doubt whether the medals which remain, supposed by Mead to have been struck in honour or commemoration, of this seminary, had really such an object. The figure of AEsculapius, which they bear, is so common on medals where there is not the slightest suspicion of their being intended to commemorate physicians, that the image carries no conviction. The names added seem to be those of magistrates or priests; indeed these offices were sometimes united, and should the name of a physician occur, it rather belonged to him in his official than his medical capacity.

Herophilus, though chiefly distinguished as an anatomist, was, however, according to Galen, acquainted with the whole science of medicine. He, as well as Erasistratus, was accused of dissecting criminals alive; nor can we at this time deny what Celsus has expressly asserted, and Tertullian confirmed, notwithstanding the silence or the evasions of Pliny. He certainly first saw the lacteals in goats, and gave his name to many parts of the human body, which he first described. We are informed by Plutarch that he considered the function of respiration to be performed by two systoles and two diastoles, but his account is far from being intelligible. Every complaint, he thought, was owing to humidity. In pleurisy, one portion of the lungs was only, in his opinion, affected; in peripneumony the whole viscus. He was peculiarly minute in his prognostics from the pulse, and appears to have illustrated it by a geometrical construction; but Pliny, to whom we are indebted for the account, seems to think that the full explanation had not reached even his era. He chiefly depended on vegetable medicines and used hellebore freely. When the whole system was in confusion, he thought the disease would escape. He was also fond of gymnastic exercises, and is quoted by Eustathius in his notes on Homer, unless with some able critics we read Herodicus, the first patron of gymnastic exercises, for Herophilus. The followers of Herophilus were numerous, and their names arc preserved; but they are spoken of with little respect by Galen, as arrogant and loquacious; and it is singular that not a single one has been celebrated for his anatomical acquisitions.

The indifference to anatomy seemingly arose from the gradually increasing influence of a new sect, whose origin has been traced to Acron of Agrigentum, the rival of Empedocles, and the cotemporary (probably) of Hippocrates, I mean the Empirical. Its real author, however, according to Galen, was Philinus of Cos, the pupil of Herophilus; though Serapion, on the authority of Celsus, has been considered as the first and chief of this sect. Herophilus himself may have dictated this schism, by lessening the authority of Hippocrates, whose anatomical descriptions were found by Herophilus to be seldom consonant with the human structure. It appears, however, more probable that the new sect arose from the superstitious dread of the Grecians, who thought themselves polluted by the touch of a dead body, for Herophilus dissected in Egypt; and this I conjecture to have been the case, since the first mark of disaffection expressed by Philinus was the aversion to anatomical dissections; nor can I find, after a very minute enquiry, that he proceeded farther in his heresy. He wrote also some tracts on plants, and commentaries on Hippocrates; but very little is known of him. Strapion of Alexandria, first openly contended that all dogmata in medicine were useless or injurious. The result of casual information, when pursued in practice, they called imitation; frequent imitation an experimental habit; and they formed rules, more or less general, according to each. When they transferred what they had observed respecting one disease to another, they called it epilogismus; and the result of their own observation, autopsia; that of others, history: the two last with analogy (epilogismus) they styled the tripod of medicine. This is the equivocal triplex sermo which Galen accuses Serapion of preferring to the ancient dogmata. Of the empirical practice Coelius Aurelianus has given some specimens: castor, cicuta or opium, and henbane, were the chief remedies. In the account of epilepsy the reader will find almost the whole of the materia medica of the empirics; but they usually premised bleeding, vomiting with veratrum album, and purging with black hellebore and scammony.

The followers of Serapion have not been distinguished in the annals of medicine; and one of the last, whose name merits our regard, Heraclides of Tarentum, deviated, we suspect, from his predecessors, since he commented on all the works of Hippocrates, and is praised by Galen. His tracts on internal affections and on diet were also commended; but, in general, the empirics were attentive to diaetetics and to surgery. Celsus praises their ordering moderate and frequent potions in fevers, though he disapproves of their management of quartans. Galen describes an antidote of Heraclides, which consisted of the juices of cicuta and henbane, of each four drachms; of castor, white pepper, costus, myrrh, and opium, of each a drachm. These were mixed in two glasses of wine, and evaporated in the sun till the whole was of the consistence of an electuary, and the quantity of a horse bean given with two glasses of wine in all cases of bites from poisonous animals, in pains, and in strangulated uterus.

We have arrived far beyond the period when Celsus tells us that medicine was divided into three branches, diaetetics, pharmaceutics, and surgery, yet we have seen the same authors treating of each; and though the proportion of their attention has been varied according to their fancies and opinions, yet the same author has seldom wholly neglected cither. The language of Celsus seems therefore to have been mistaken, and in Tres partes deducta seems to mean the particular attention paid to each branch; for surgical knowledge often exerted in the moment of necessity, and diaetetics, which require domestic attention, could form no part of the systems of the priests. Some, however, were particularly famous for branches of the science, which they had particularly cultivated, and we know that lithotomy, for instance, was practised by exclusive operators. The empirics, we have indeed remarked, were peculiarly attentive to diet; but there is no evidence of any real separation, except in the case of the operation for the stone. On attentively examining this subject, we find traces of compounders of medicines (pharmacopo-lae) distinct from the practitioners. Theophrastus, for instance, distinguished the Pharmacopola Thrasyas from his pupil Alexias, who was acquainted with the whole art of medicine. The same author asserts that Eu-denius of Chio was accustomed to prepare twenty doses of hellebore in one morning; and it appears, from the subsequent sentence, that the pharmacopolae kept open stalls, not unlike, probably, the stages of modern mountebanks. The herbalists were a still inferior class, subservient to the pharmacopolae. The successors of He-raclides are not of sufficient importance to detain us, for much remains to fill up the picture.