The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800Buck, Albert H. (Albert Henry)
History
The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800
Buck, Albert H. (Albert Henry)
Medicine -- History
Archigenes, the fifth member of this group of Pneumatists, was born
in Apamea, Syria, and lived in Rome under the reigns of Trajan
(98–117 A. D.) and Hadrian (117–138 A. D.). Le Clerc speaks of him as
belonging to the Eclectics rather than to the Pneumatists. This is
a matter, however, of small importance, as the sects were, at that
period, very much mixed. The poet Juvenal, who was a contemporary
of Archigenes, refers to him briefly as a physician who had a large
practice; and the historian Suidas says that he wrote a great deal
about physics as well as about medicine. That he was esteemed highly
as an authority in practical surgery is shown by the fact that Galen,
when he discusses surgical topics, makes frequent quotations from
the writings of Archigenes. Only fragments of the latter, however,
have come down to our time. His popularity as a practitioner was very
great; notwithstanding which he managed to write several treatises
on a variety of topics--on the pulse, on feverish diseases, on the
different types of fevers, on local affections, on the diagnosis and
treatment of acute and chronic maladies, on the right moment when
surgical operations should be performed, on drugs, and on therapeutic
procedures in general. He applied ligatures to blood-vessels and also
arrested further bleeding from them by passing needles through the
adjacent parts in such a manner as to exert pressure upon the vessel (a
procedure which is termed “acupressure”); he operated for the removal
of both mammary and uterine cancers; he employed the red-hot cautery
iron for the arrest of hemorrhage and also for the relief of coxalgia,
and he was familiar with the use of the vaginal speculum.
Antyllus, another prominent surgeon of that period, joined the
Methodists at a considerably later date. He was also the author
of an excellent treatise on surgery, the greater part of which,
unfortunately, has been lost or destroyed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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