Doctors as well as scientists combined observation with theory during the Hellenistic period. Herophilus, who lived in the first half of the third century B.C.E., worked at Alexandria and studied the writings attributed to Hippocrates (see Chapter 3). He approached the study of medicine in a systematic, scientific fashion: he dissected dead bodies and measured what he observed. He was the first to describe the nervous system accurately, and he differentiated between motor and sensory nerves. Herophilus also studied the brain, which he considered the center of intelligence, and discerned the cerebrum and cerebellum. His other work dealt with the liver, lungs, and uterus. His younger contemporary Erasistratus also conducted research on the brain and nervous system and improved on Herophilus’s work. Erasistratus, too, followed in the tradition of Hippocrates and believed that the best way for the body to heal itself was through diet and air.

Because Herophilus and Erasistratus followed the teachings of Hippocrates, later writers on medicine labeled them “Dogmatists” or as belonging to the “Dogmatic school,” from the Greek word dogma, or philosophical idea. Along with their hands-on study of the human body, the Dogmatists also speculated about the nature of disease and argued that there were sometimes hidden causes for illness. Opposing them was an Empiric school begun by a student of Herophilus; doctors in the Empiric school held that observation and experiment were the only ways to advance medical knowledge and viewed the search for hidden causes as useless.

Whether undertaken by Dogmatists or Empiricists, medical study did not lead to effective cures for the infectious diseases that were the leading cause of death for most people, and people used a variety of ways to attempt to combat illness. Medicines prescribed by physicians or prepared at home often included natural products blended with materials thought to work magically. People also invoked Asclepius, the god of medicine, in healing rituals, or focused on other deities who were believed to have power over specific illnesses. (See “Picturing the Past: Physician with Young Patient.”) They paid specialists to devise spells that would cure them or prevent them from becoming ill in the first place (see page 104). Women in childbirth gathered their female friends and relatives around them, and in larger cities they could also hire experienced midwives who knew how to decrease pain and assist in the birthing process if something went wrong. People in the Hellenistic world may have thought that fate determined what would happen, but they also actively sought to make their lives longer and healthier.