contribution to the knowledge of the scientific treatment of
diseases holds no such place, therefore, as their anatomical
investigations.

Half a century after the time of Herophilus there appeared a
Greek physician, Heraclides, whose reputation in the use of drugs
far surpasses that of the anatomists of the Alexandrian school.
His reputation has been handed down through the centuries as that
of a physician, rather than a surgeon, although in his own time
he was considered one of the great surgeons of the period.
Heraclides belonged to the "Empiric" school, which rejected
anatomy as useless, depending entirely on the use of drugs. He is
thought to have been the first physician to point out the value
of opium in certain painful diseases. His prescription of this
drug for certain cases of "sleeplessness, spasm, cholera, and
colic," shows that his use of it was not unlike that of the
modern physician in certain cases; and his treatment of fevers,
by keeping the patient's head cool and facilitating the
secretions of the body, is still recognized as "good practice."
He advocated a free use of liquids in quenching the fever
patient's thirst--a recognized therapeutic measure to-day, but
one that was widely condemned a century ago.


ARCHIMEDES OF SYRACUSE AND THE FOUNDATION OF MECHANICS

We do not know just when Euclid died, but as he was at the height
of his fame in the time of Ptolemy I., whose reign ended in the
year 285 B.C., it is hardly probable that he was still living
when a young man named Archimedes came to Alexandria to study.
Archimedes was born in the Greek colony of Syracuse, on the
island of Sicily, in the year 287 B.C. When he visited Alexandria
he probably found Apollonius of Perga, the pupil of Euclid, at
the head of the mathematical school there. Just how long
Archimedes remained at Alexandria is not known. When he had
satisfied his curiosity or completed his studies, he returned to
Syracuse and spent his life there, chiefly under the patronage of
King Hiero, who seems fully to have appreciated his abilities.

Archimedes was primarily a mathematician. Left to his own
devices, he would probably have devoted his entire time to the
study of geometrical problems. But King Hiero had discovered that
his protege had wonderful mechanical ingenuity, and he made good
use of this discovery. Under stress of the king's urgings, the
philosopher was led to invent a great variety of mechanical
contrivances, some of them most curious ones. Antiquity credited
him with the invention of more than forty machines, and it is
these, rather than his purely mathematical discoveries, that gave
his name popular vogue both among his contemporaries and with
posterity. Every one has heard of the screw of Archimedes,
through which the paradoxical effect was produced of making water
seem to flow up hill. The best idea of this curious mechanism is
obtained if one will take in hand an ordinary corkscrew, and
imagine this instrument to be changed into a hollow tube,
retaining precisely the same shape but increased to some feet in
length and to a proportionate diameter. If one will hold the
corkscrew in a slanting direction and turn it slowly to the
right, supposing that the point dips up a portion of water each
time it revolves, one can in imagination follow the flow of that
portion of water from spiral to spiral, the water always running
downward, of course, yet paradoxically being lifted higher and
higher towards the base of the corkscrew, until finally it pours
out (in the actual Archimedes' tube) at the top. There is another
form of the screw in which a revolving spiral blade operates
within a cylinder, but the principle is precisely the same. With
either form water may be lifted, by the mere turning of the
screw, to any desired height. The ingenious mechanism excited the
wonder of the contemporaries of Archimedes, as well it might.
More efficient devices have superseded it in modern times, but it
still excites the admiration of all who examine it, and its
effects seem as paradoxical as ever.

Some other of the mechanisms of Archimedes have been made known
to successive generations of readers through the pages of
Polybius and Plutarch. These are the devices through which
Archimedes aided King Hiero to ward off the attacks of the Roman
general Marcellus, who in the course of the second Punic war laid
siege to Syracuse.

Plutarch, in his life of Marcellus, describes the Roman's attack
and Archimedes' defence in much detail. Incidentally he tells us
also how Archimedes came to make the devices that rendered the
siege so famous:

"Marcellus himself, with threescore galleys of five rowers at
every bank, well armed and full of all sorts of artillery and
fireworks, did assault by sea, and rowed hard to the wall, having
made a great engine and device of battery, upon eight galleys
chained together, to batter the wall: trusting in the great
multitude of his engines of battery, and to all such other
necessary provision as he had for wars, as also in his own
reputation. But Archimedes made light account of all his devices,
as indeed they were nothing comparable to the engines himself had
invented. This inventive art to frame instruments and engines
(which are called mechanical, or organical, so highly commended
and esteemed of all sorts of people) was first set forth by
Architas, and by Eudoxus: partly to beautify a little the science
of geometry by this fineness, and partly to prove and confirm by
material examples and sensible instruments, certain geometrical
conclusions, where of a man cannot find out the conceivable


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