A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

3o8 The Hellenistic Age
A stadium is have taken the distances from India to Iberia, does not
contain altogether 200,000 stadia.^
Physiology.
Pliny, Natural
History,
xi. 69, citing
in part,
Herophilus
(3d century
B.C.).
But Herophilus
taught
that the
brain was
the seat o£
the mind.
Herophilus
taught the
circulation
of the blood.
The heart is
the principal seat of the heat of the body;
it is constantly beating, and moves as though it were one
animal enclosed within another. It is enveloped in a
membrane equally supple and strong, and is protected by
the bulwarks formed by the ribs and the bone of the
breast, as the primary source and origin of life.
It contains
within itself the primary receptacles for the spirit
and the blood, in its sinuous cavity, which in the larger
animals is threefold and in all at least twofold. Here the
mind has its abode. From this source proceed two large
veins, which branch into the front part and the back
part of the body, and which, spreading out in a series of
branches, convey the vital
blood by other smaller veins
Herophilus
distinguished
the
arteries from
the veins
(and we may
add, the
sensory from
the motor
nerves).
'i. 88.
Contract of
marriage in
Egypt.
over the whole body. . . .
The pulsation of the arteries is more perceptible on the
surface of the limbs, and affords indications of nearly
every disease, being either stationary, quickened or retarded,
conformably to certain measures and metrical
laws, which depend on the age of the patient, and which
have been described with remarkable skill by Herophilus,
who has been regarded as a prophet in the wondrous art
of medicine.
V. Social Life
I have accepted thee for wife, I have given thee one
argenteus, in shekels 5, one argenteus in all for thy woman's
Shortly be- mft. I must give thee 6 obols, their half is 3, to-day 6,
fore Alexan- .
der's con- by the month 3, by the double month 6, 36 for a year:
^^^^
I
'
argenteus= ^ °
,
equal to one argenteus and a fifth in shekels 6; one ar-
5 ^v.^u^]I_/; 'This would give a circumference of about 22,700 miles for the
obols. thirty-sixth parallel, or about 28,500 miles for the equator.