Erasistratus of Ceos

Erasistratus, of Ceos (third century BC), famous physician who may have practised at Alexandria, the leading medical centre of the time, or more probably at Antioch. He was the first to expound a complete physiological scheme of the body, which he saw as a mechanism. Unlike Herophilus whose anatomical and physiological investigations he continued, Erasistratus abandoned the doctrine of humours as an explanation of the origin of disease and instead ascribed the latter to the repletion of the body through undigested nutrition. Since it was his view that the heart is the centre and source of both the arterial and the venous systems and that there are very fine interconnections between arteries and veins, he was not far from the conception of the circulation of blood, which was not accurately described until 1628 (by the English physician William Harvey). His writings were still being read in the fourth century AD, but survive today only in quotation.