Here I can only indicate very briefly the
course of the stream and its freightage.
With the rise of Christianity, Alexandria became a centre of bitter
theological and political factions, the story of which haunts the
memory of anyone who was so fortunate as to read in his youth Kingsley's
"Hypatia." These centuries, with their potent influence of neoplatonism
on Christianity, appear to have been sterile enough in medicine. I have
already referred to the late Greeks, Aetius and Alexander of Tralles.
The last of the Alexandrians was a remarkable man, Paul of AEgina, a
great name in medicine and in surgery, who lived in the early part of
the seventh century. He also, like Oribasius, was a great compiler. In
the year 640, the Arabs took Alexandria, and for the third time a great
library was destroyed in the "first city of the West." Shortly after
the conquest of Egypt, Greek works were translated into Arabic, often
through the medium of Syriac, particularly certain of Galen's books
on medicine, and chemical writings, which appear to have laid the
foundation of Arabian knowledge on this subject.
Through Alexandria then was one source: but the special development of
the Greek science and of medicine took place in the ninth century under
the Eastern Caliphates.
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