The Legacy of Greece: Essays By: Gilbert Murray, W. R. Inge, J. Burnet, Sir T. L. Heath, D'arcy W. Thompson, Charles Singer, R. W. Livingston, A. Toynbee, A. E. Zimmern, Percy Gardner, Sir Reginald Blomfield
Philosophy
The Legacy of Greece: Essays By: Gilbert Murray, W. R. Inge, J. Burnet, Sir T. L. Heath, D'arcy W. Thompson, Charles Singer, R. W. Livingston, A. Toynbee, A. E. Zimmern, Percy Gardner, Sir Reginald Blomfield
Greece -- Civilization
The anatomical advances made by the Alexandrian school naturally reacted
on surgical efficiency. The improvement so effected may be gathered, for
instance, from an account of the anatomical relationships in certain
cases of dislocation of the hip given by the Alexandrian surgeon
Hegetor, who lived about 100 B. C. In his book περι αιτιων {peri
aitiôn}, _On causes_ [_of disease_], he asks 'why (certain surgeons) do
not seek another way of reducing a luxation of the hip.... If the joints
of the jaw, shoulder, elbow, knee, finger, &c., can be replaced, the
same, they think, must be true of all parts, nor can they give an
account of why the femur cannot be put back into its place.... They
might have known, however, that from the head of the femur arises a
ligament which is inserted into the socket of the hip bone ... and if
this ligament is once ruptured the thigh bone cannot be retained in
place'.[91] This passage contains the first description of the structure
known to modern anatomists as the _ligamentum teres_, a strong fibrous
band which unites the head of the femur with the socket into which it
fits in the hip bone, like the string that binds the cup and ball of a
child's toy. This ligament is ruptured in certain severe cases of
dislocation of the hip.
[91] This is the only passage of Hegetor's writing that has
survived. It has been preserved in the work of Apollonius of Citium.
After the establishment of the school at Alexandria, medical teaching
rapidly became organized, but throughout the whole course of antiquity
it suffered from the absence of anything in the nature of a state
diploma. Any one could practise, with the result that many quacks,
cranks, and fanatics were to be found among the ranks of the
practitioners who often were or had been slaves. The great Alexandrian
school, however, did much to preserve some sort of professional
standard, and above all its anatomical discipline helped to this end.
Between the founding of the Alexandrian school and Galen we are not rich
in medical writings. Apart from fragments and minor productions, the
works of only five authors have survived from this period of over four
hundred years, namely, Celsus, Dioscorides, Aretaeus of Cappadocia, and
two Ephesian authors bearing the names of Rufus and Soranus.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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