Soranus was a prolific writer; the treatises which he wrote and which deal with a great variety of subjects, number thirty in all. The majority of these works, however, have been lost. He had many followers and his influence upon medical science was very great, not simply during his lifetime, but also for several centuries after his death. He commanded the respect and confidence of the opponents of Methodism as well as of the members of his own sect. One of his most pronounced traits of character was his readiness to condemn, on every possible occasion, superstitious practices, such as the employment of amulets, magnets, etc. He was also a very persistent and earnest advocate of the gentler and more rational obstetric methods. For example, he disapproved of the reckless employment of remedies for hastening the expulsion of the foetus, of the practice of succussion (which was carried out by the aid of a ladder), of making the pregnant woman run up and down stairs, of a resort to rough mechanical procedures for extracting the placenta, etc. The following quotation from one of Soranus’ treatises (Gynaeciorum, Lib. I., cap. 19) reveals clearly what sort of a man and physician he was:—
There is a disagreement; for some reject destructive practices, calling to witness Hippocrates, who says, “I will give nothing whatever destructive” and deeming it the special province of medicine to guard and preserve what nature generates. Another party maintains the same view, but makes this distinction, viz.: that the fruit of conception is not to be destroyed at will because of adultery or of care for beauty, but is to be destroyed to avert danger impending at parturition, if the uterus be small and cannot subserve the perfecting of the fruit, or have hard swellings and cracks at its mouth, or if some similar condition prevail. This party says the same thing about preventing conception, and with it I agree.
(Translated from the Greek by the late John G. Curtis, M.D., of New York.)
Soranus was not only a great obstetrician,—admitted by all the authorities to have been the greatest in ancient times,—he was also in high repute for the work which he did in other departments of medicine—in gynaecology, for example, in the instruction of midwives, in the management of children’s diseases, in the diagnosis and treatment of both acute and chronic diseases, in surgery, etc. While in general he adhered to the fundamental teachings of the Methodists, he did not hesitate to depart from the beaten pathway of that sect in his explanations of certain pathological conditions; for he was more of a clinical observer than a sectarian, and it was probably his independent manner of thinking that gave the sect new vigor and thus enabled it to live on through such a long period of time. Galen, who was not at all disposed to speak favorably of the Methodists, says that he tried a number of the remedies recommended by Soranus and found them good.
Caelius Aurelianus probably flourished during the third century A. D. The different authorities, however, do not agree as to the limits of the period during which he lived; some saying that his career antedated that of Galen, while others claim that he came upon the scene after the death of the latter, which occurred early in the third century A. D. His chief merit appears to have been that, through his translation of the writings of Soranus into Latin, he placed within reach of the physicians of Rome the teachings of that admirable diagnostician and therapeutist; for it must be remembered that the great majority of the Roman medical men were not able to read Greek. On the other hand, Caelius Aurelianus, who was himself a thoroughly practical physician, deserves considerable credit for having enriched the text of his book with many very appropriate examples (chiefly with regard to questions of diagnosis) drawn from his own personal experience, which must have been extensive. During the Middle Ages, as we are informed by Friedlaender, this work furnished the chief source from which the monks derived their knowledge about diseases and their proper treatment. The Latin in which the book is written is described by nearly all the authorities as barbaric.
The Pneumatists.—Methodism had been established only a very few years when Athenaeus of Attalia, a city on the coast of Pamphylia, Asia Minor, founded (about 50 A. D.) a new sect—that of “Pneumatism.” He was not the discoverer of the “pneuma” or “vital spirit,” for that had already been admitted by the earlier schools of philosophy as a fifth primary creative element, supplementary to the four well-known substances—fire, air, earth and water. He believed that heat, cold, moisture and dryness (the primary qualities of these four bodies) were not the veritable elements of living beings. Heat and cold, he maintained, were “efficient causes” and moisture and dryness “material causes.” To these he added “spirit” as a fifth element; and he taught that this spirit enters into the formation of all bodies and preserves them in what may be termed their natural state. It was from the Stoics, more particularly, that Athenaeus borrowed this belief, and it was the latter fact, as Le Clerc says, which led Galen to speak of Chrysippus—one of the most famous of the Stoics—as “the Father of the Sect of the Pneumatists.”
In his application of the doctrine of Pneumatism to the science of medicine, Athenaeus maintained that the majority of diseases owed their origin to some disturbance or disorder of the spirit; but it is almost impossible to understand, from the scanty data which have come down to us, what Athenaeus really meant by the term “spirit,” and by the expression “disorder of the spirit.”
From the definition which he gives of the word “pulse” one is justified in drawing the conclusion that he considered the spirit to be an actual substance, capable of undergoing, to a greater or less degree, such changes as expansion and contraction. The same obscurity of meaning is encountered when one endeavors to discover how the new doctrine affected the practice of medicine. (Le Clerc.)
In view of all these circumstances it is not at all surprising that Pneumatism was not very popular with the physicians of Rome, and that, after a brief period had elapsed, many of the adherents of this doctrine abandoned it and gave their preference to the more practical teachings of the Methodists. Meyer-Steineg goes so far as to remark that, to all intents and purposes, such a thing as a sect of Pneumatists did not exist.
The most prominent of the disciples of Athenaeus were Theodorus, Agathinus, Herodotus, Magnus and Archigenes.