ABSTRACT
§ 1 . In the last centuries before Christ the seat of medical learning was in Cos and Alexandria. In the Christian era the most important medical theorists belonged by birth to Asia Minor and by naturalisation or residence to Rome. The change does not appear to have produced any marked characteristics in the various doctrines; the schools evolved their theories largely from observation, and there is a marked increase in the extent to which generalisations are drawn from experiment and the study of the human body. At the same time medicine retains a close connexion with philosophy; the great doctors were often explicitly attached to a school of philosophy, and where they professed independence often actually followed the lead of some philosopher whose theory of the universe formed a background to their special researches. Science had not yet attained a sufficiently departmental character to be cut loose from wider generalisations: men’s efforts were divided between obtaining data for theories and supporting assumptions by misguided interpretations of the material provided by experiment.
