He ̄rophilos had a genius for coining anatomical names, and some are still standard in
anatomy today. He named part of the small intestine the do ̄dekadaktulon, Latinized as duo-
denum, i.e., named “.. .from being about equal in length to the breadth of twelve fingers
(25 cm.)” (Gray 1959: 1,278). He called another part of the small intestine the ne ̄stis or
“fasting” intestine, ieiunium in Latin, the “empty” bowel, learned by modern medical stu-
dents as the jejunum (cf. “jejune”). Finely woven nets resembled cobwebs, so that when
He ̄rophilos described the back of the eye as being arakhnoeide ̄s (“like a cobweb”) or khito ̄n
amphible ̄stroeides (“a net-like tunic”), this becomes Latin’s retina, which retains He ̄rophilos’
analogy to fish-nets. This passion for terminologies and labeling is characteristic of
Hellenistic taxonomy as applied to medicine, zoology, botany, philosophy, rhetoric and edu-
cational theory, so that nomenclature in medicine provides its relation to structure (“what
does it look like?”), function (“what does it do?”), and treatment (“how can one restore a
healthy state?”). Categories, analogies, naming things, ordering things, relating things, and
dividing things pervaded the works of A (and cf. P Soph. and S),
emphasizing relationships of parts to one another, genus and species, classifications by
differences and similarities (the zoological books), and the context of models in correlation
joined with analogy (Elements, Qualities, and Humors). He ̄rophilos’ knowledge of
“healthy things” mirrors the notion presented in the Hippokratic Corpus, Nourishment: food
has dunamis, good or bad only in relation to something; and Stoic-type terminologies are
definitive for He ̄rophilos, who divided the Art of Medicine into three parts: knowledge of
the disease, knowledge of health, and neutral things, and thus semiotics became trikhronos
se ̄meio ̄sis (a “three-phased inference from symptoms [or signs]”).
Vascular physiology likewise employed such analogies, using poetic meter to suggest the
relation between diastole and systole as reflecting the age of a patient: the pyrrhic, trochaic,
spondaic, and iambic rhythms correspond respectively to infant, child, adult, and elderly,
each with an up-beat and down-beat (arsis and thesis), analogous to rhythms in music and
poetry, beginning with a pro ̄tos khronos aisthe ̄tos (“a first perceivable unit of time”), the dilation
of an artery in a newborn (von Staden 1989: T174, 183). Diagnostics received colorful
names for pulse-rates (“meters” as “frequencies”), each suggestive by analogy to the disease
and age of the patient: a eunuch’s pulse is dorkadizo ̄n, Latinized as caprizans, “leaping like a
gazelle,” another’s pulse is murme ̄kizo ̄n, Latin formicans, “crawling like an ant” (T163a, 163b,
with 169, 170, and 180). Striking is He ̄rophilos’ clinical application of his pulse-theories by
his construction of a small portable water clock (a klepsudra) as a combination thermometer
and adaptable timer, assuming the correlation of the pulse rates to a patient’s presentation
of fever (viz. the greater the frequency, the higher the temperature). He ̄rophilos used his
water clock when he felt the pulse of feverish patients, then adjusted the clock for the
patient’s age, “.. .by as much as the movements of the pulse exceeded the number that
is natural for filling up the recalibrated clock, by that much he also stated the pulse too
frequent, viz. the patient had either more or less of a fever” (T182; trans. von Staden, with
minor changes; cf. Longrigg 1993: 204). Modern authorities in the history of technology
generally agree that He ̄rophilos’ klepsudra is mechanically feasible (Thompson 1954: 37–38;
Brumbaugh 1966: 68–73; Fraser 1972: 2.518, n. 113; West 1973).
Ed.: von Staden (1989).
A. Souques, “Que doivent à Hérophile et à Erasistrate l’anatomie et la physiologie du système
nerveux?” Bulletin de la Société française d’Histoire de la Médecine 28 (1934) 357–365; Idem, “Connais-
sances neurologiques d’Hérophile et d’Erasistrate,” Revue Neurologique 63 (1935) 145–176;
H.A. Thompson, “Excavations in the Athenian Agora: 1953,” Hesperia 23 (1954) 31–67; R.S.
HE ̄ROPHILOS OF KHALKE ̄DO ̄N