Much as we may pride ourselves, at this time, on the various and wonderful applications of the arts both of use and ornament, we cannot deny that, in remote antiquity, some of these acquired an extension and power of which we have now lost all knowledge. That a nation should not venture to imitate such gigantic enterprises as the erection of pyramids and the other immense architectural creations of the Egyptians, need excite no regret; but we would fain learn, even with our enlarged knowledge of the metals, as tools and machines, how that people contrived to cut and sculpture with such luxuriance of figures and ornaments, and such nicety of detail, their basaltic and granite rocks. Mysterious, also, to us, is the art by which they could fix colours on the walls of their temples, so that they retain a brilliancy unequalled and unapproachable even in modern times. It is, indeed, mortifying to our pride, in this age of boasted superiority over any preceding one, to see, that in the very instance of colouring, in the fine arts, we should be gradually retrograding; and now the artist must acknowledge with shame, that it is out of his power to fix colours on the canvass or on glass, in a manner to insure their duration, equal to those everyday specimens in painting, during a period which we call Gothic and half-civilized. A visit to the Greco-Roman towns of Herculaneum and Pompeii, and a subsequent inspection of objects obtained from them and collected in the museum at Portici, will serve to rebuke the vanity of the present age, by manifesting its inferiority in the added embellishments of art to substantial domestic architecture; and in the taste, variety and convenience of objects used in domestic economy. Whether for culinary convenience, saving labour, or appropriate ornaments, there nearly all modern discoveries have been anticipated; and there, too, many things are yet without imitation or adequate substitute. We had long been accustomed to pride ourselves, among other matters, on glass as a modern invention. Recent observations show that this article was used in Pompeii for the same purposes to which it is now applied.

It is no part of our design to carry out in detail this view of the long and great interruptions to the progress of the sciences and arts. We merely desired to arrest the attention of our medical brethren to the fact, the better to prepare them for receiving favourably a brief notice of similar breaks and voids in the course of that knowledge which exerts a powerful influence on the prevention and treatment of disease. They will admit afterwards the obvious propriety of retrospection; and not heedlessly, even by implication, assume that the present fairly represents the accumulated stock of past ages. They will learn, also, that, if in their upward travel to the source they are suddenly stopped short by the disappearance of the stream, they must not suppose they have reached the object of their search. They may have gone as far as their own language and its literature can guide them; but with a little perseverance and the aid of another tongue they can resume their course, and see new countries and rich and varied productions. It has hap pened, most unfortunately, that in attempts to trace to its beginnings the mighty stream of knowledge, attention has been distracted, and even farther travel arrested by odd constructions on its banks, and certain obscure inscriptions, or banners planted, representing hypotheses, theories, and wild speculations, which professed to designate thereby the people on its borders, the productions of its soil and its mineral wealth. Opinions, like the sands of the desert, are ever shifting; but we must not be deterred, on this account, from a search after those immutable truths, ethical, scientific and natural, often buried under opinions; any more than we should desist from exploring the extent, details, and magnificence of an

Egyptian temple which has been partially covered by these sands. Extending the comparison; we are forced to acknowledge, also, that, with the unthrift of the poor Arabs in Egypt, who build their miserable huts on the walls and porticos of these partially buried temples, modern commentators and speculative writers have often planted their frail systems and hypotheses on the structure of some grand and once well-known truth; and thus, whilst marking its site, contrive still more to conceal and disfigure its real nature and proportions.

With the name of HIPPOCRATES are associated, in the minds of a majority of J younger medical men, certain doctrines of crises and critical days, and obscurities of pathology, ignorance of anatomy and physiology, and a timid or inert practice for the cure of disease, with some aphorisms touching its progress and termination. But were the history of medicine as complete as the materials allow, this great man would be exhibited to every youthful student as the author of the first facts and carefully recorded observations of the phenomena of disease and its treatment in the acute stage; and of the influence of air, water and soil, or of climate and localities on the health and minds of man. He would be lauded for having set an example, which was soon and for a long time forgotten, of cautions philosophical reasoning, by which the inductions from the phenomena of other sciences were shown to be inapplicable to that of medicine: the former being governed by fixed laws; the latter having for its subject an animated machine, the nature of which was ever varying. Hippocrates was not averse to philosophical theory; but he believed that the practice of the healing art must be based on the results of observations and experience. In theory, he invested a mighty power or general principle, which he called Nature, with the guidance of the functions and the restoration of their just balance-a doctrine substantially the same with that taught in recent times by Cullen. In practice, he recommended abstinence and diluents during the early stage of fevers,—and this, added to his sparing use of emetics and purgatives, furnished a standard, a recurrence to which at the present time constitutes the chief feature in the school of Broussais. When he advises bleeding in inflammation, and that the blood should be drawn as nearly as possible from the part affected, he is in accordance with the treatment in such cases resorted to at the present day, with a full knowledge of the circulation. His practice of bleeding in dropsies, neglected so long and then resumed, to be again forgotten, is the now prevalent and as we! suppose correct one. As an acute and accurate observer of symptoms, he was deeply skilled in both diagnosis and prognosis. The book of Aphorisms, even in this respect alone, will ever remain a monument of his judgment and his genius. Accused of being timid in medical practice, he showed himself to be a bold surgeon, performing, with the exception of lithotomy, all kinds of operations with his own hand. We are told that he reduced dislocations and set fractures, extracted the fœtus with the forceps, and used the trepan, not only in depression of the cranium, but also in cases of severe headache. Even in cases of hydrothorax and empyema, he was not deterred from the risks of operation. After ascertaining that fluid was present in the cavity of the chest, he made an incision between the ribs, allowed part of the matter or lymph to escape, and then introduced a tent, which he withdrew regularly once a day till the whole was evacuated. His use of the actual cautery, which was a favourite remedy with him, and the application of burning flax or dried mushrooms over the skin of the affected part, are traits of practice which at this day are thought to be bold, and in the hands of celebrated men original. Add to these his recourse to tents and issues, and we shall find, not merely

shadowed out, but specifically recommended and used, the main points of practice most approved of at this very time. And yet this great man, of whom all Greece was proud, to whom statues were erected, as to a divinity, whom Plato regarded as a master, and whose style was followed by Aristotle as the best of all models, who has had Galen for his commentator, and to whose original views on the influence which climate and living exerts over the moral and intellectual nature of man, both Montesquieu and Cabanis have been so largely indebted: this great man, we say, is only known to the mass of our profession by the casual mention, in an introductory discourse, of some of his insignificant hypotheses; or, perhaps, still worse, by his name being used in terms of slight-if not of ridicule.

Hippocrates claims our notice in another point of view. He is the chief of the Greek physicians and medical philosophers; and his name will designate an epoch to the student, in his inquiries into the regimen and course of exercises adopted in the gymnasia and at the games, in order to give the Grecian youth that strength of body, agility of movement, and graceful carriage which no plan of physical education in modern times has suitably accomplished. It would seem that these exercises were so methodized under suitable directors as to be made instrumental to the cure of various diseases.

In speaking, next, of the Alexandrian school under the Ptolemies, rendered celebrated by the names of HEROPHILUS and ERASISTRATUS, one cannot so much complain of the neglect of its practice and discoveries, as regret that a knowledge of these has only been preserved by the references and quotations respecting them found in subsequent writers. The student of anatomy is reminded of the name of Herophilus, whilst learning the structure of the brain, a part of which is still called after its first describer. He is not, however, so generally informed of the singular merits and discoveries of both Herophilus and Erasistratus, who first had an opportunity of practising the dissection of human subjects. The former pointed out the torcula, which still bears his name, and also the choroid plexus and the calamus scriptorius. He regarded the brain as the centre of the nervous system;-distinguished and named the duodenum, and gave a full, clear, and admirable description of the liver. He pointed out also vessels (the lacteals) in the mesentery containing milk; but his account is much less definite and exact than that of Erasistratus, who says, that it is only at particular times they are so found, being at others quite empty. This latter, also, taught that there were two classes of nerves,-one for sensation, and the other for motion. Erasistratus, in his medical practice, was mild; trusting principally to regimen and simples :-but as a surgeon, he was bold and decided. In schirrosities and tumours of the liver, he did not scruple to make an ample division of the integuments, and try applications to that viscus itself, which he described as a parenchymatous substance, principally formed of a congeries of veins. In cases of retention of urine, he made use of the particular catheter which long bore his name.

The surgeons of the Alexandrian school distinguished themselves by the nicety of their dressings and bandages, of which they invented a great variety. Lithotomy was practised by particular individuals, who devoted themselves exclusively to that operation. We learn that one of them, Ammonius, employed an instrument, by means of which he broke down stones in the bladder. A similar instrument has been found in one of the towns already mentioned, which was buried by volcanic eruptions nearly eighteen hundred years ago. In that great storehouse of antiquities, the museum at Portici, may be seen surgical instruments of every variety of make,

and for all kinds of operations, some of which were entirely lost to the world, and have been in later times reproduced as inventions.

Desiring more to invite retrospection than to give a connected historical sketch of ancient medicine, we shall omit any detail of the doctrines and practice of the Greek physicians, who, after ASCLEPIADES, flocked to Rome, and acquired for themselves reputation and fortune. The medical practitioner, who seeks popularity and a long list of patients in preference to a conscientious though somewhat rigid discharge of his duties, will find an exemplar in Asclepiades. Though this writer left fuller and more accurate histories of diseases than any of his predecessors, and increased the list of remedies by the introduction of cold bathing, yet he did not hesitate to indulge in quackery, when it seemed agreeable to the whim of his patients. Seasailing and carriage-rides were admirable remedies with him in cases of obstruction; and when physic was rejected as unpalatable, he prescribed declamation and dancing;-music, vocal and instrumental.

The methodic school acquired more celebrity by the illustrations and facts of CELIUS AURELIANUS, than by the efforts of its founder, THEMISON. The plan of the -former was to trust for the identification of a disease to the development of the symptoms. His curative means were of the most simple kind. He followed Asclepiades in the division of diseases into acute and chronic. But we are under other and lasting obligations to Cœlius Aurelianus, such as should inspire us with respect for every historian of science and art. Except for his commemorations, we should have lost all traces of many of his predecessors and contemporaries; and thus have been deprived of the original and valuable parts of their theories and practice, which were only preserved by incorporation with his own.

Among the few native Romans who obtained celebrity in medicine, and who have transmitted it to posterity, AURElius Cornelius CELSUS is entitled to the first notice and warmest commendation. Hopelessly ignorant as the world is of his personal history, so as even to be in doubt whether he ever practised medicine, it has received, in his eight books, De Re Medica, evidence of his learning, skilful arrangement and tasteful style, which from his own time to the present has won him universal praise ;- -we mean amongst all those who have earnestly and diligently sought for knowledge. But we grieve to say, that by no medical school or teacher in this country, as far as we have learned, are the careful perusal and study of Celsus recommended. In no university or institution for teaching the languages, with us, is this author, whose pure Latinity has ever been extolled, put into the hands of the student. He who has been called the Latin Hippocrates, for the quantity of his sound practical information, and the Cicero of physicians, for the elegance of his style; and who has left directions for the use of exercise and diet in the cure of indigestion, rivalling the best at the present time, is not known, except by name, to a tithe, might we not say without injustice to one in a hundred, of our professional brethren. His Materia Medica is inert; but in his opinions of clinical medicine, taken from Hippocrates, with a little admixture from Asclepiades and Themison, we find many useful hints and some clear and applicable directions. His descriptions of fevers are sufficiently graphic and accurate to allow of the varieties being easily traced in practice-and the substance of his remarks on the Pulse is worthy of praise and remembrance. Of the eight books which he has written on medical matters, four are dedicated to surgery. In these latter a vast fund of information is to be found, not only gratifying to the curious, but instructive to the practitioner. We might specify his method of performing lithotomy; the operation for depressing

the cataract, and for making an artificial pupil; his rules for distinguishing fracture; and the application of the trepan. He was the first to remark that there may be rupture of a vessel within the cranium without fracture or depression. The whole of his account of injuries of the head is superior to many subsequent and more extensively received descriptions. He was fully aware of the power of suction to prevent the deleterious effects of poisoned wounds;-and he states that, provided the operator has no wound or ulcer in his mouth, he incurs no danger. In his seventh book, he acquaints us with the method of breaking the stone within the bladder.

To the esteem of the sincere and earnest inquirer after medical truth, who will not bind himself by the dogmas of any sect, Celsus has another claim, in the circumstance of his belonging to the pure eclectic school.

ARETEUS was also of this school. To him we are indebted for descriptions of disease, divested of all theoretical assumption, and evidently bearing the impress of personal knowledge. Sensible of the importance of anatomy, as the only proper basis on which medical science can rest, he, like Celsus, prefaces his account of diseases by an anatomical description, not very accurate indeed, of the parts concerned. He is represented to be the first who made use of blisters. In acute diseases his favourite purgatives were elaterium and hellebore. Additional confidence in the merits of Aretaus has been inspired, in later times, by the enthusiastic admiration for him professed by Boerhaave, who has given a beautiful edition of his works.

Passing over names not without merit, we come to the celebrated GALEN, whose genius, erudition, and powers of philosophical combination left an impress on medical practice and opinions for more than thirteen hundred years after his own times. As it is of facts-actual discoveries and valuable observations of diseases that we discourse on this occasion, we shall not repeat what has been so often said of the labours of Galen as an enthusiastic commentator on Hippocrates, and author of numerous treatises on speculative questions in medicine. Of his real contributions to the science, a more copious notice and a distinct and respectful remembrance are due-more than is, we fear, generally accorded. The great physician of Pergamos was both zealous in his study of comparative anatomy and diligent and successful. in his dissections of the human subject. He availed of the opportunities offered to physicians in Rome, by their being permitted to dissect the bodies of foreign enemies and of culprits and exposed children, and of slaves. By these means and fo tunate chances in his travels, Galen accumulated that vast assemblage of anatomical facts, which gives such value to his works, and of which Vesalius, one of the most learned anatomists of the sixteenth century, has spoken in terms of high and, at the same time, deserved commendation.

But in our admiration for the genius and attainments of Galen, we should not be slow to censure the misapplication of his powers and of his learning to the support of idle speculations and fanciful hypotheses; and his fondness for system often unsupported by and at direct variance with facts. His name should serve as a beacon to warn us against false philosophy, and mistaking subtleties of opinion and abstractions for things. One beautiful feature in his mind, which he displays in common with Hippocrates and the most illustrious names that have adorned our profession, is his piety. Amidst the darkness of paganism he breaks out into a burst of religious. feeling, which would be worthy of a Christian sage of the present day. "In writing these books, (de usu partium,) I compose," he says, "a true and real hymn to that