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The Empiric school of medicine ( Empirics, Empiricists, or Empirici, ) was a school of medicine founded in Alexandria the middle of the third century BC.Heinrich von Staden, Herophilus: The Art of Medicine in Early Alexandria: Edition, Translation Cambridge University Press, 2008, p. xiii) The school was a major influence on ancient Greek and Roman medicine. The school's name is derived from the word (ἐμπειρία "experience") because they professed to derive their knowledge from experiences only, and in doing so set themselves in opposition to the Dogmatic school. Serapion of Alexandria, and Philinus of Cos, are regarded as the founders of this school in the 3rd century BC. Other physicians who belonged to this sect were: Apollonius of Citium, Glaucias, Heraclides, Bacchius, Zeuxis, Menodotus, Theodas, Herodotus of Tarsus, Aeschrion, Sextus Empiricus, and Marcellus Empiricus. The sect survived a long time, as Marcellus lived in the 4th century AD. The doctrines of this school are described by Aulus Cornelius Celsus in the introduction to his De Medicina.
They said that medicine, in its infancy, was deduced from ; for the sick, in a time when there were no physicians, had either taken food in the first days of their illness, or had abstained, and that the illness was more quickly alleviated in one group than the other. This and other instances occurring daily were observed by people diligent enough to realize which method was best to cure particular conditions, and hence the art of medicine arose. Medicine was not invented in consequence of , but that theory was sought after the discovery of medicine.
They asked, too, whether reason prescribed the same as experience, or something different: if the same, then it is not necessary; if different, then mischievous. Initially there was a necessity to examine cure with the greatest accuracy, but now they are sufficiently ascertained; there are no new diseases, and hence no need for any novel methods of healing. If a patient had an unknown type of illness, the physician would not recourse to obscure knowledge, but would see what type of illness was most nearly allied, and to make a trial of the medicines used to treat the allied condition.
What matters is not what causes, but what cures the condition. It does not matter why a concoction works, only that it does work. Nor is it necessary to know how we breathing, but what relieves difficult breathing. Likewise we should not seek the cause of motion in the arteries, but what each kind of motion indicates. These things are known by experience and epilogism reasoning. There is no value in dead bodies, since the state of the organs are very different in dead bodies compared to living ones.
They supported their opinions in favour of experience with the famous " Tripod of Medicine":
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