Nemesius, Bishop of Emissa (near the end of the fourth century), wrote a treatise on the Nature of Man, which is remarkable for a proof that the good Churchman came very near to two discoveries which were made long after his time. He says that the object of the bile is to help digestion, to purify the blood, and impart heat to the body. Freind says[516] that in this we have the foundation of that which Sylvius de la Boë with so much vanity boasted he had invented himself. He adds that “if this theory be of any use in physic, Nemesius has a very good title to the discovery.”

The Bishop described the circulation of the blood in very plain terms considering the state of physiology at that time.

“The motion of the pulse takes its rise from the heart, and chiefly from the left ventricle of it; the artery is, with great vehemence, dilated and contracted by a sort of constant harmony and order. While it is dilated it draws the thinner part of the blood from the next veins, the exhalation or vapour of which blood is made the aliment for the vital spirit. But while it is contracted it exhales whatever fumes it has through the whole body and by secret passages. So that the heart throws out whatever is fuliginous through the mouth and the nose by expiration.”[517]

Lucius wrote on pharmacy in the first century.

Marcellus Empiricus (4th cent.) wrote a work on pharmacy, in Latin, which contains many charms and absurdities.

Ætius was a Greek medical writer, who probably was a Christian of the sixth century. He was a native of Amida in Mesopotamia, and studied medicine at Alexandria. He wrote the Sixteen Books on Medicine, one of the most valuable medical treatises of antiquity; though containing little original matter, it includes numerous extracts from works which have since perished.[518]

Many of the opinions of Ætius on surgery are excellent; he recommended the seton, and lithotomy for women. Bleeding arteries he treated by twisting, as we do now, and by tying. He advised irrigation with cold water in the treatment of wounds. In lithotomy he recommends that the knife should be guarded by a tube. He treated worms with pomegranate bark, as has been recently revived.[519] He was the first Greek medical writer amongst the Christians who gives specimens of the spells and charms so much used by the Egyptian Christians in surgical cases; thus, in case of a bone sticking in the throat, the physician was to cry out in a loud voice, “As Jesus Christ drew Lazarus from the grave, and Jonah out of the whale, thus Blasius, the martyr and servant of God, commands, ‘Bone, come up or go down!’”[520]

Influence of Christianity

At the time when the civilizations of Greece and Rome had reached their highest perfection, the poison of sensual indulgence, elevated into a religion, had instilled itself into the whole social life of the people: in every incident of life, in business, in pleasure, in literature, in politics, in arms, in the theatres, in the streets, in the baths, at the games, in the decorations of his home, in the ornaments and service of his table, in the very conditions of the weather and the physical phenomena of nature[521] it met the Roman, and tainted every action of his life. Archdeacon Farrar, in the first chapter of his Early Days of Christianity, draws an awful picture of the corruption of the old world at the moment when it was confronted by Christianity. The parent had absolute power over the person of his child, and could destroy its life at its pleasure. Unfortunate children were exposed on the roadside or left to perish in the waters of the Tiber. The slave was the mere chattel of his master, and Roman women treated their servants with the utmost barbarity. Juvenal has painted for us in terrible colours the vices and shameless conduct of the women, and the selfish luxury and degrading pleasures of the men; the nameless crime, which was the disgrace of Greek and Roman civilization, was looked upon as merely a question of taste; and St. Paul, in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, has recorded for all time what was the highest the most perfect civilization Paganism has ever produced was able to effect for the moral condition of the people. To the Roman and Greek world, saturated with the most perfect philosophy the world has ever known, and adorned by the art which has ever since been the despair of its imitators, there presented itself the Catholic Church, and before the sun’s embrace sublime

“Night wist