Theon of Alexandria, of very uncertain period, probably in the fourth century after Christ, wrote a celebrated book on Man, in which he treated of diseases in a systematic order, and also of pharmacy.
CHAPTER V.
LATER ROMAN MEDICINE.
The Eclectic and Pneumatic Sects.—Galen.—Neo-Platonism.—Oribasius and Ætius.—Influence of Christianity and the Rise of Hospitals.—Paulus Ægineta.—Ancient Surgical Instruments.
The Sect of the Pneumatists.
Athenæus of Cilicia about A.D. 69 founded at Rome the Sect of the Pneumatists, at the time when the Methodists enjoyed their greatest reputation.
They admitted an active principle of an immaterial nature, to which they gave the name of πνεῦμα, spirit. This principle caused the health or the diseases of the body, and the sect was named from it. Athenæus was a Stoic, who had adopted the doctrines of the Peripatetics. In addition to the pneuma, he developed the theory of the elements, and in them recognised the positive qualities of the animal frame. The union of heat and moisture is necessary for the preservation of health. Heat and dryness cause acute diseases, cold and moisture produce phlegmatic disorders, cold and dryness give rise to melancholy. At death, all things dry up and become cold.[488]
Great services to pathology were rendered by the Pneumatic sect. Several new diseases were discovered by them; but they over refined their doctrines, especially that of fevers and the pulse; they thought this alternate contraction and dilatation of the arteries was the operation of the pneuma, or spirit passing from the heart. Diastole or dilatation pushes forward the spirit, the systole or contraction draws it back.[489]
The Sect of the Eclectics
Derived their name from the fact that they selected from each of the other sects the opinions that seemed most probable. They seem to have agreed very nearly, if they were not actually identical with the sect known as the Episynthetics. They endeavoured to join the tenets of the Methodici to those of the Empiric and Dogmatic sects, and to reconcile their differences.[490]