A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

438 HEROPHILUS. IIEROPHILUS.
lished (Gr. Lat.) with the first book of Euclid, by vol. ii. p. 895). He is even said to have carried
Dasypodius, Strasburg, 1571, 8vo. 6. Excerpta his ardour in his anatomical pursuits so far as to
de Mensuris (Gr. Lat.), in the Analecta Graeca of have dissected criminals alive,-a well-known accuthe Benedictines, vol. i. Paris, 1688,4to. 7. Elo- sation, which it seems difficult entirely to- disbea'ywo-y I'v T yecjuespovjuevowv, exists only in ma- lieve, though most of his biographers have tried to
nuscript. (Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. iv. p. 237; explain it away, or to throw discredit on it; for
Heilbronner, Hist. AMati7es. Univ.; Montucla, Hist. (not to lay much stress on the evident exaggeration
des Mathsim. vol. i.) [A. D. M.] of Tertullian, who says (De Anima, c. 10. p. 757)
HE'RON ("Hpov), a Byzantine writer of un- that he dissected as many as six hundred), it is
certain age, but who lived previous to the emperor mentioned by Celsus (De Medic. i. praef. p. 6),
Constantine Porphyrogenitus, composed a work on quite as a well-known fact, and without the least
agriculture, divided into twenty books, which was suspicion: as to its truth; added to which, it should
a compilation from most of those works which were be remembered, that such a proceeding would not
extracted by the writers of the " Geoponica," who be nearly so shocking to men's feelings two thoulikewise perused the work of Heron, which is lost. sand years ago as it would be at present. He was
Heron was perhaps the author of a work on Mea- the author of several medical and anatomical
sures, extant in the Imperial Library at Vienna. works, of which nothing but the titles and a few
(Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. iv. p. 239, vol. viii. pp. fragments remain. These have been collected by
19, 20.) [W. P. ] C. F. H. Marx, and published in a dissertation
HERO'PHILE. [SIBYL.] entitled "De Herophili Celeberrimi Medici Vita;
HERO'PHILUS ('HpdpLAos), one of the most Scriptis, atque in Medicina Meritis," 4to. Gotting.
celebrated physicians of antiquity, who is best 1840. Dr. Marx attributes to Herophilus a work
known on account of his skill in anatomy and phy- llepl A'TL6v, De Causis; but this is considered by
siology, but of whose personal history few details a writer in the British and Foreign Medical Rehave been preserved. He was a native of Chal- view (vol. xv. p. 109) to be a mistake, as the
cedon in Bithynia (Galen, Introd. vol. xiv. p. treatise in question was probably written by one
683 M), and was a contemporary of the physician of his followers named Hegetor [HEGETOR]. He
Philotimus, the philosopher Diodorus Cronos, and owes his principal celebrity (as has been already
of Ptolemy Soter, in the fourth and third centuries intimated) to his anatomical researches -and discoB. C., though the exact year both of his birth and veries, and several of the names which he gave to
death is unknown. He was a pupil of Praxagoras different parts of the human body remain in com(Galen, De Met/h. Med. i. 3. vol. x. p. 28), and a mon use to this day; as the " Torcular Herophili,"
fellow-pupil of Philotimus (Galen, Ibid.), and the "Calamus Scriptorius," and the " Duodenum."
settled at Alexandria, which city, though so lately He was intimately acquainted with the nervous sysfounded, was rapidly rising into eminence under tem, and seems to have recognised the division of
the enlightened government of the first Ptolemy. the nerves into those of sensation (aie-07rc'd),
Here he soon acquired a great reputation, and was and those of voluntary motion (7rpoaipeTLKca), though
one of the first founders of the medical school in he included the tendons and ligaments under the
that city, which afterwards eclipsed in celebrity all common term VeipoV, and called some at least of
the others, so much so that in the fourth century the nerves by the name of 7rdpot, meatus. He
after Christ the very fact of a physician having placed the seat of the soul (To Q's T /vxjis r7yepEostudied at Alexandria was considered to be a suffi- yuco'v) in the ventricles of the brain, and thus procient guarantee of his ability. (Amm. Marc. xxii. bably originated the idea, which was again brought
16.) Connected with his residence here-an amu- forward, with some modification, towards the end
sing anecdote is told by Sextus Empiricus (Pyrrhon. of the last century, by Simmering in his treatise
Instit. ii. 22. 245, ed. Fabric.) of the practical Ueber das Oryan der Seele, ~~ 26, 28, Kiinigsberg,
method in which he convinced Diodorus Cronus 1796, 4to. The opinions of Herophilus on patho-:of the possibility of motion. That philosopher logy, dietetics, diagnosis, therapeutics, materia meused to deny the existence of motion, and to sup- dica, surgery, and midwifery (as far as they can be
port his assertionf by the following dilemma: —" If collected from the few scattered extracts and allumatter moves, it is either in the place where it is, sions found in other authors), are collected by Dr.
or in the place where it is not; but it cannot move Marx, but need not be here particularly noticed.
in the place where it is, and certainly not in the place Perhaps the weakest point in Herophilus was his
where it is not; therefore it cannot move at all." pharmaceutical practice, as he seems to have been
He happened, however, to dislocate his shoulder, one of the earliest physicians who administered
and sent for Herophilus to replace it, who first large doses of hellebore and other drastic purgabegan by proving by his own argument that it was tives, and who (on the principle that compound
quite impossible that any luxation could have diseases require compound medicines) began that
taken place; upon which Diodorus begged him to strange system of heterogeneous mixtures, some of
leave such quibbling for the present, and to proceed which have only lately been expelled from our own
at -once to his surgical treatment. He seems to Pharmacopoeia, and which still keep their place on
have given his chief attention to anatomy, which the Continent. He is the first personwho is known
he studied not merely from the dissection of ani- to have commented on any of the works of Hipmals, but also from that of human bodies, as is ex- pocrates (see Littr6, OeuVres d'Hippocrate, vol. i.
pressly asserted by Galen (De Uteri Dissect. c. 5. p. 83), and wrote an explanation of the words
that had become obscure or obsolete. He was the
* In another passage (De Usau Part. i. 8. vol. founder of a medical school which produced several
iii. p. 21) he is called a Carttlaginian, but this is eminent physicians, and in the time of Strahb
-merely a mistake (as has been more than once re- was established at Men-Carus, near Laodiceia, in
marked), arising from the similarity of the names Phrygia. (Strabo, xii. 8. p. 77, ed. Tauchn.) Of
XaKic-O',os and KapXl-qsos. the physicians who belonged to this school perhaps