Demosthenes Philalethes

{{Short description|Ancient Greek physician}}

Demosthenes Philalethes (Gr. {{lang|grc|Δημοσθένης ὁ Φιλαλήθης}}) was an ancient Greek physician of Asia Minor who was one of the pupils of Alexander Philalethes, a contemporary of Aristoxenus, and a follower of the teachings of Herophilos.Galen, De Differ. Puls. iv. 4, vol. viii. p. 727 He succeeded Alexander as the head of the Herophilean school of medicine in Carura.{{cite book | last = von Staden | author-link = Heinrich von Staden (historian) | first = Heinrich | title = Herophilus: The Art of Medicine in Early Alexandria | publisher = Cambridge University Press | year = 1989 | location = Cambridge | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=rGhlIfJZkVoC | isbn = 0-521-23646-0}} He probably lived around the beginning of the 1st century, and was especially celebrated for his skill as an oculist. He was the author of the most influential ophthalmological work of antiquity, the Ophthalmicus, on diseases of the eye, which appears to have been still extant in the Middle Ages, but of which nothing now remains, although some extracts are preserved by Aëtius Amidenus, Paul of Aegina, Rufus of Ephesus, and other later writers.{{cite encyclopedia | last = Greenhill | first = William Alexander | title = Alexander Philalethes | editor = William Smith | editor-link = William Smith (lexicographer) | encyclopedia = Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology | volume = 1 | pages = 991 | publisher = Little, Brown and Company | location = Boston | year = 1867 | url = http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=moa;cc=moa;idno=acl3129.0001.001;q1=philalethes;size=l;frm=frameset;seq=1006}} In this book, he attributed glaucoma to a pathology of the crystalline humor.{{Cite journal |last1=Leffler |first1=Christopher T |last2=Schwartz |first2=Stephen G |last3=Hadi |first3=Tamer M |last4=Salman |first4=Ali |last5=Vasuki |first5=Vivek |date=2015-02-02 |title=The early history of glaucoma: the glaucous eye (800 BC to 1050 AD) |journal=Clinical Ophthalmology |volume=9 |pages=207–215 |doi=10.2147/OPTH.S77471 |doi-access=free |issn=1177-5467 |pmc=4321651 |pmid=25673972}} He also wrote a work on the pulse, which is quoted by Galen. Demosthenes was the last known Herophilean in Asia Minor.{{cite book | last = Plinio | first = Prioreschi | title = A History of Medicine | year = 1996 | publisher = Horatius | pages = 504 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=HaX733MnZZ4C | isbn = 1-888456-02-7}}