_Alexander_ of Tralles (525-605), a city of Lydia, where Greek was spoken, was a son of the physician Stephen, and the most celebrated of five sons, who were all distinguished for their learning. He traveled extensively, and fixed his residence in Rome, where he became celebrated. He lived to an advanced age, and, being no longer able to practice, composed a treatise of twelve books, exclusively devoted to affections that did not require the aid of surgery. He professed the greatest veneration for Galen, but did not blindly adopt his opinions. He described the first reported case of excessive hunger and pain due to intestinal worms; he advised venesection in the foot rather than in the arm; but with all his sound judgment and mental enlightenment he had faith in amulets and talismans, and widely recommended them. It may be said for him, such was the universal prejudice of his age, the whole world being plunged in superstition, that it was necessary for every one to pay some tribute to the prevailing belief; and we may add that it is necessary to make this excuse for some who practice much{051} nearer to ourselves than did those ancient physicians. _Paul, or Paulus_, surnamed _Ægineta_ (because he was born in the Island of Ægina), was among the last of the Greek physicians who have special interest for us. It is supposed that he died about A.D. 690. He traveled extensively, and his skill in surgery and obstetrics rendered him celebrated even among the Arabs, whose midwives sent for him in consultation from great distances. He composed a compendium of medicine, divided into seven books, and not only did not hesitate to borrow from his predecessors, but quoted from them most extensively; a number of his chapters were taken almost _verbatim_ from Oribasius; however, he made no secret of it, but rather boasted that he had judiciously sought to appropriate the best of the writings of those he most revered. He showed originality, however, in the treatment of hydrocephalus, in advising paracentesis of the thorax and abdomen, in the extraction of calculi from the bladder, in the treatment of aneurism, the excision of hypertrophied mammæ in men, etc. He was the first to describe varicose aneurism, and the first to perform the operation of bronchotomy after the method borrowed from _Antyllus_, of which he has transmitted a very detailed account. Of this Antyllus, by the way, it may be added, _en passant_, that he was one of the most distinguished and original surgeons of antiquity. He flourished during the third century after Christ; was the first to describe the extraction of small cataracts; and is, perhaps, best known to the surgical world to-day by his exceedingly bold plan of opening aneurisms, so successfully imitated a generation or so ago by James Syme.