But curious as were all the hypotheses with which Hellenic natural philosophy foisted upon medicine, they should by no means be confounded with superstition, for even a baseless hypothesis is far removed from superstition. Otherwise, medicine and superstition would be almost identical conceptions, for baseless hypotheses have at no time been wanting in our science. Superstition, so far as its sources are found in philosophy, did not enter medical science until philosophy sought for an explanation of the various processes of life not only in material but also in immaterial forces. And as Indian as well as Persian philosophy, in the earliest period of its existence known to us, had already found in demons the immaterial elements which to a great extent control the processes of life in man, it will be seen that the relations between philosophy and medical superstition are quite old. The Hellenic poets and philosophers, Homer, Hesiod, Empedocles, Democritus, and Plato, elaborated this immemorial doctrine of demons and introduced it into Greece. But the recognition of immaterial, supernatural curative factors did not attain any considerable and determining influence in ancient medicine until the year 150 B.C., when, under the eager advocacy of Alexandrian Jews, Oriental and Occidental doctrines became amalgamated to a coherent system of theosophic and medical mysticism. Medicine suffered greatly for centuries from this mysticism, which prevailed late in the middle ages and even up to more recent times. The center of all the various forms under which speculations in the philosophical and theosophical domain made their appearance was Alexandria, the great central point of culture in which the civilization of the Orient and the Occident were united in the evolution of a new theory of life. But that the birthplace of developments so momentous for the future of medicine should be Alexandria almost suggests the thought that the writers of history were indulging in a satire upon medical science; for it is well known that Alexandria was the very place where medical enlightenment and the progress of ancient medicine won their greatest triumphs under the renowned anatomists, Herophilus and Erasistratus.