“The motion of the pulse takes its rise from the heart, and chiefly from the left ventricle of it; the artery is, with great vehemence, dilated and contracted by a sort of constant harmony and order. While it is dilated it draws the thinner part of the blood from the next veins, the exhalation or vapour of which blood is made the aliment for the vital spirit. But while it is contracted it exhales whatever fumes it has through the whole body and by secret passages. So that the heart throws out whatever is fuliginous through the mouth and the nose by expiration.”[517] LUCIUS wrote on pharmacy in the first century. MARCELLUS EMPIRICUS (4th cent.) wrote a work on pharmacy, in Latin, which contains many charms and absurdities. ÆTIUS was a Greek medical writer, who probably was a Christian of the sixth century. He was a native of Amida in Mesopotamia, and studied medicine at Alexandria. He wrote the _Sixteen Books on Medicine_, one of the most valuable medical treatises of antiquity; though containing little original matter, it includes numerous extracts from works which have since perished.[518] Many of the opinions of Ætius on surgery are excellent; he recommended the seton, and lithotomy for women. Bleeding arteries he treated by twisting, as we do now, and by tying. He advised irrigation with cold water in the treatment of wounds. In lithotomy he recommends that the knife should be guarded by a tube. He treated worms with pomegranate bark, as has been recently revived.[519] He was the first Greek medical writer amongst the Christians who gives specimens of the spells and charms so much used by the Egyptian Christians in surgical cases; thus, in case of a bone sticking in the throat, the physician was to cry out in a loud voice, “As Jesus Christ drew Lazarus from the grave, and Jonah out of the whale, thus Blasius, the martyr and servant of God, commands, ‘Bone, come up or go down!’”[520] INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY