to have been the writer of a collection of letters on medical topics and also of a history of the discoveries made in medicine subsequently to the time of Themison.
Archigenes, the fifth member of this group of Pneumatists, was born in Apamea, Syria, and lived in Rome under the reigns of Trajan (98-117 A. D.) and Hadrian (117-138 A. D.). Le Clerc speaks of him as belonging to the Eclectics rather than to the Pneumatists. This is a matter, however, of small importance, as the sects were, at that period, very much mixed. The poet Juvenal, who was a contemporary of Archigenes, refers to him briefly as a physician who had a large practice; and the historian Suidas says that he wrote a great deal about physics as well as about medicine. That he was esteemed highly as an authority in practical surgery is shown by the fact that Galen, when he discusses surgical topics, makes frequent quotations from the writings of Archigenes. Only fragments of the latter, however, have come down to our time. His popularity as a practitioner was very great; notwithstanding which he managed to write several treatises on a variety of topics—on the pulse, on feverish diseases, on the different types of fevers, on local affections, on the diagnosis and treatment of acute and chronic maladies, on the right moment when surgical operations should be performed, on drugs, and on therapeutic procedures in general. He applied ligatures to blood-vessels and also arrested further bleeding from them by passing needles through the adjacent parts in such a manner as to exert pressure upon the vessel (a procedure which is termed "acupressure"); he operated for the removal of both mammary and uterine cancers; he employed the red-hot cautery iron for the arrest of hemorrhage and also for the relief of coxalgia, and he was familiar with the use of the vaginal speculum.
Antyllus, another prominent surgeon of that period, joined the Methodists at a considerably later date. He was also the author of an excellent treatise on surgery, the greater part of which, unfortunately, has been lost or destroyed.
