tronomy, mathematics and optics, the work
of the Alexandrians constitutes the basis of a large part of our modern
knowledge. The school-boy of today--or at any rate of my day--studies
the identical problems that were set by Euclid 300 B.C., and the student
of physics still turns to Archimedes and Heron, and the astronomer to
Eratosthenes and Hipparchus. To those of you who wish to get a brief
review of the state of science in the Alexandrian School I would
recommend the chapter in Vol. I of Dannemann's history.(31)

(31) Friedrich Dannemann: Grundriss einer Geschichte der
Naturwissenschaften, Vol. I, 3d ed., Leipzig, 1908.

Of special interest to us in Alexandria is the growth of the first great
medical school of antiquity. Could we have visited the famous museum
about 300 B.C., we should have found a medical school in full operation,
with extensive laboratories, libraries and clinics. Here for the first
time the study of the structure of the human body reached its full
development, till then barred everywhere by religious prejudice; but
full permission was given by the Ptolemies to perform human dissection
and, if we may credit some authors, even vivisection. The original
writings of the chief men of this school have not been preserved, but
there is a possibility that any day a papyrus maybe found which will
supplement the scrappy and imperfect knowledge afforded us by Pliny,
Celsus and Galen. The two most distinguished names are Herophilus--who,
Pliny says, has the honor of being the first physician "who searched
into the causes of disease"--and Erasistratus.

Herophilus, ille anatomicorum coryphaeus, as Vesalius calls him, was a
pupil of Praxagoras, and his name is still in everyday use by medical
students, attached to the torcular Herophili. Anatomy practically dates
from these Alexandrines, who described the valves of the heart, the
duodenum, and many of the important parts of the brain; they recognized
the true significance of the nerves (which before their day had been
confounded with the tendons), distinguished between motor and sensory
nerves, and regarded the brain as the seat of the perceptive faculties
and voluntary action. Herophilus counted the pulse, using the
water-clock for the purpose, and made many subtle analyses of its rate
and rhythm; and, influenced by the musical theories of the period,
he built up a rhythmical pulse lore which continued in medicine until
recent times. He was a skilfu