Chap. 5.] CELEBEATED PHYSICIANS. 3/3 



from a most dangerous malady, by following a mode of treat- 

 ment diametrically opposite. 



I pass over in silence many physicians of the very highest 

 celebrity, the Cassii, for instance, the Calpetani, the Arruntii, 

 and the Rubrii, men who received fees yearly from the great, 

 amounting to no less than two hundred and Mtj thousand 

 sesterces. As for Q,. Stertinius, he thought that he conferred 

 an obligation upon the emperors in being content with five 

 hundred thousand'^ sesterces per annum ; and indeed he proved, 

 by an enumeration of the several houses, that a city practice 

 would bring him in a yearly income of not less than six hun- 

 dred thousand sesterces. 



Fully equal to this was the sum lavished upon his brother 

 by Claudius Cuesar ; and the two brothers, although they had 

 drawn largely upon their fortunes in beautifying the public 

 buildings at J^eapolis, left to their heirs no less than thirty 

 millions of sesterces !^- such an estate as no physician but Ar- 

 runtius had till then possessed. 



Next in succession arose Yettius Yalens, rendered so noto- 

 rious by his adulterous connection'^ with Messalina, the wife 

 of Claudius C'gesar, and equally celebrated as a professor of 

 eloquence. AVhen established in public favour, he became the 

 founder of a new sect. 



It was in the same age, too, during the reign of the Emperor 

 Nero, that the destinies of the medical art passed into the 

 hands of Thessalus,^^ a man who swept away all the precepts 

 of his predecessors, and declaimed with a sort of frenzy against 

 the physicians of every age; but with what discretion and 

 in what spirit, we may abundantly conclude from a single trait 

 presented by his character — upon his tomb, Avhich is still 

 to be seen on the Appian Way, he had his name inscribed as 

 the " latronices" — the *' Conqueror of the Physicians." No 

 stage-player, no driver of a three-horse chariot, had a greater 

 throng attending him when he appeared in public : but he 

 was at last eclipsed in credit by Crinas, a native of Massilia, 

 who, to wear an appearance of greater discreetness and more 

 devoutness, united in himself the pursuit of two sciences, and 



16 Rather more than £4400. " More than £265,000. 



^s For wliich he was put to death a.d. 48. 



13 A native of Tialles in Lydia, and tlie son of a weaver there, Galen 

 mentions him in terras of contempt and ridicule. 



