t Alexandria in the Serapeum, the temple of
Jupiter Serapis, and there it remained till the time of Theodosius the
Great, until in 391 A.D. both temple and library were almost completely
destroyed by a fanatical mob of Christians led by the Archbishop
Theophilus. When Alexandria was taken by the Arabs in 641, under the
Calif Omar, the destruction was completed.

Ptolemy gathered to the museum at Alexandria a number of very learned
men, who lived within its walls and were provided with salaries, the
whole system closely resembling a university. Grammar, prosody,
mythology, astronomy and philosophy were studied, and great attention
was given to the study of medicine. Euclid was the teacher of
Mathematics, and Hipparchus of Alexandria was the father of Astronomy.
The teaching of medicine and of astronomy was for long based upon
observation of ascertained facts. The Alexandrian School endured for
close upon a thousand years, and its history may be divided into two
periods, namely, from 323 to 30 B.C., during the period of the
Ptolemies, and from 30 B.C. to 640 A.D. The second period was
distinguished for the study of speculative philosophy, and of the
religious philosophy of the Gnostics, and was not a scientific period.

Julius Caesar was not the only Roman Emperor who brought trouble upon the
Alexandrian School, for the brutal Caracalla took away the salaries and
privileges from the _savants_, and prohibited scientific exhibitions and
discussions. In recent excavations in the Baths of Caracalla in Rome,
the ruins of a library have been discovered, and it is believed by some
archaeologists that Caracalla supplied this library with books and
parchments from Alexandria.

The Asclepiadae of Cos and Cnidos had discoursed upon the phenomena of
disease, without attempting to demonstrate its structural relations;
like the sculptors of their own age, they studied the changing
expression of vital action almost wholly from an external point of view.
They meddled not with the dead, for, by their own laws, no one was
allowed to die within the temple. But the early Alexandrians were
subject to no such restrictions; and turning to good account the
discoveries of Aristotle in natural history and comparative anatomy,
they undertook for the first time to describe the organization of the
human frame from actual dissections.[7]

Thus there was inaugurated at Alexandria the Anatomic Period of
Medicine, which lasted till Egypt came under t