Chap. 8.] CHANGES EFFECTED BY ASCLEPIADES. 157 



knowledge only to be acquired by personal examination and 

 actual experience as a matter of course, he was obliged to 

 renounce all previously-established theories, and to trust rather 

 to his flowing periods and his well-studied discourses, for 

 gaining an influence upon the minds of his audience. 



Eeducing the whole art of medicine to an estimation solely 

 of primary causes, he made it nothing but a merely con- 

 jectural art, and established it as his creed, that there are five 

 great principles of treatment for all diseases in common ; diet, 

 use or non-use of wine, frictions, exercise on foot, and ex- 

 ercise 23 in a carriage or on horseback. As every one perceived 

 that each of these methods of treatment lay quite within his 

 own reach, all, of course, with the greatest readiness gave 

 their assent, willing as they were to believe that to be true 

 which was so easy of acquisition ; and hence it was that he 

 attracted nearly all the world about him, as though he had 

 been sent among mankind on a special mission from heaven. 



CHAP. 8. THE CHANGES EFFECTED BY ASCLEPIADES IN THE 

 PRACTICE OF MEDICINE. 



In addition to this, he had a wonderful tact in gaining the 

 full confidence of his patients : sometimes he would make them 

 a promise of wine, and then seize the opportune moment for 

 administering it, while on other occasions, again, he would 

 prescribe cold water : indeed, as Herophilus, among the an- 

 cients, had been the first to enquire into the primary .causes of 

 disease, and Cleophantus had brought into notice the treat- 

 ment of diseases by wine, so did Asclepiades, as we learn from 

 M. Varro, prefer to be indebted for his surname and repute 

 to the extensive use made by him of cold water as a 

 remedy. He employed also various other soothing remedies 

 for his patients ; thus, for instance, it was he that introduced 

 swinging beds, the motion of which might either lull the 

 malady, or induce sleep, as deemed desirable. It was he, 

 too, that brought baths into such general use, a method of 

 treatment that was adopted with the greatest avidity in 

 addition to numerous other modes of treatment of a pleasant 

 and soothing nature. By these means he acquired a great 

 professional reputation, and a no less extended fame ; which 



23 " Gestationes ;" exercise on horseback, in a litter, or in a carriage 

 drawn by horses. 



