Athenæus

, a physician, born at Attalia, a city of Cilicia, was contemporary with Pliny, in the first century, and was the founder of the Pneumatic sect. His doctrine was, that the fire, air, water, and earth, are not the true elements, as is generally supposed, but that their qualities | are so, namely, heat, cold, moisture, and dryness. To these he added a fifth element, which he called spirit ('Evsufta.) whence hisisect had its name. He thought that this spirit penetrated all bodies, and kept them in their natural state this he borrowed from the Stoics, whence Galen calls Chrysippus, one of the most famous of those philosophers, the Father of the Pneumatic sect; but Athenaeus was the first who applied it to physic. He thought that, in the greatest part of diseases, this spirit was the first that suffered and that the pulse was only a motion caused by the natural and involuntary dilatation of the heat in the arteries and heart. We have but very little of this famous author remaining, and must look for a further account of the doctrines of his sect In the writings of Aretseus. ¹