results, and then they fell back into the less arduous, the easy-going ways of speculation. Only a very few had sufficient strength of character to walk in the older pathway, and among the number were some who left Alexandria and established schools in the other cities—as, for example, Zeuxis, who organized a new centre of medical teaching at Laodicea, in the interior of Asia Minor, and Hikesios, who founded another school at Smyrna, on the seacoast of Lydia. It is not strange, therefore, that before many years had elapsed the two original schools at Alexandria died a natural death. As Pliny aptly writes, "It was so much more comfortable to sit on the benches of the schools and have learning poured into your ears than to wander daily through the desert outside in search of other nourishing plants." As a further result of this deadness of the schools at Alexandria (that is, of the sect of the Dogmatics) the more serious-minded physicians espoused with eagerness the side of the Empirics—a sect which developed about this time, but which did not, it must be confessed, hold out much hope of solving the physiological and pathological problems of the day, but which nevertheless satisfied in some measure their needs as practitioners.
Philinus of Cos (286 B. C.) was looked upon as the founder of the school of the Empirics, and among its most distinguished disciples were: Serapion of Alexandria (279 B. C.), Glaucias, Apollonius Biblas, and—perhaps the most celebrated of them all—Herakleides of Tarentum (242 B. C.), who did such excellent work in the department of pharmacology. It was he, for example, who defined more precisely than had been done by any one of his predecessors the proper manner of employing opium. In addition, he wrote a commentary on the Hippocratic works and also separate treatises on medical, surgical and pharmaceutical topics. In the latter category belongs his book entitled "A Military Pharmacopoeia." Last of all, Apollonius Mus, a distinguished follower of Herophilus, deserves to be mentioned because it was he who perfected the preparation of castor oil. At a still later date (158 B. C.) Zopyrus proved himself to be a most worthy suc-
