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GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE

cians only in gangrene as a subsidiary aid, seems, even in Alexandria, to have made no great progress; for Celsus also regarded it as a last sad resource in gangrene: yet by the time of Trajan, under Archigenes, amputation had become a recognized procedure for ulcers, growths, injuries and even deformities. The limb to be removed was bandaged to expel the blood, and a tourniquet was placed above the line of severance; or sometimes the chief blood-vessels were first cut down and tied, and the smaller tied or twisted, during the opera­tion —' transfixing them with a sharp hook and twisting them round and round and clos­ing them by this twisting ' — a proceeding of which there is no trace in Hippocrates, nor apparently in the earlier Alexandria. These good methods were afterwards obliterated by the bad fashion of the searing-iron." "3

From the side of philosophy as well as physiology, it is interesting to note how the Pneumatic School represents a stage in the mind's search for a vital principle to account for the living man, and more specifically to account for the animal heat, which is a clearly vital quality, and yet indicative of ill when­ever it rises above a certain degree, as in

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