This city also became celebrated as the seat
of one of the seven Churches, and St. John
refers to it not only as a place where the Christians
were persecuted, but as the seat of idolatrous
worship, which is thought by commentators to
mean the worship of the serpent in the temples
of Asclepius.
In the school of i^lexandria medicine was
for the first time made a special study, freed from
the control of priests or the state, and delivered
from the entanglements of philosophy. The
advance made by the science was most pro-
nounced. Anatomy received special consider-
■ation, and schools were opened for that branch
of study in which dissection was carefully taught.
Herophilus of Chalcedon, in Bithynia, has
always been regarded as the link uniting the



42 A CHRONOLOGY OF MEDICINE.
Greek with the Alexandrian schools of medicine.
He first studied at Cos, having for a master the
renowned Praxagoras, and thence proceeded to
Alexandria in the lifetime of Ptolemy I., and at
that monarch's invitation. At the time of his
arrival in the city, the philosopher Diodorus
Cronus had met with an accident by which one
of his shoulders was dislocated. Herophilus re-
duced the dislocation, and was afterwards induced
by the solicitation of the king and the learned
men to take up a permanent residence in the
city. He devoted himself to the study and
teaching of anatomy, and is regarded as the
founder of scientific anatomy and physiology.
