158 PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY. [Book XXVI. 



was very considerably enhanced by the following incident : 

 meeting the funeral procession of a person unknown to him, 

 he ordered the body to be removed from the funeral pile 24 and 

 carried home, and was thus the means of saving his life. This 

 circumstance I am the more desirous to mention, that it may 

 not be imagined that it was on slight grounds only that so 

 extensive a revolution was effected in the medical art. 



There is, however, one thing, and one thing only, at which 

 we have any ground for indignation, the fact, that a single 

 individual, and he belonging to the most frivolous nation 25 in 

 the world, a man born in utter indigence, should all on a 

 sudden, and that, too, for the sole purpose of increasing his 

 income, give a new code of medical laws to mankind ; laws, 

 however, be it remembered, which have been annulled by 

 numerous authorities since his day. The success of Asclepi- 

 ades was considerably promoted by many of the usages of ancient 

 medicine, repulsive in their nature, and attended with far too 

 much anxiety : thus, for instance, it was the practice to cover 

 up the patient with vast numbers of clothes, and to adopt 

 every possible method of promoting the perspiration ; to order 

 the body to be roasted before a fire ; or else to be continually 

 sending the patient on a search for sunshine, a thing hardly to 

 be found in a showery climate like that of this city of ours ; 

 or rather, so to say, of the whole of Italy, so prolific 25 * as it is 

 of fogs and rain.- 6 It was to remedy these inconveniences, 

 that he introduced the use of hanging baths, 27 an invention 

 that was found grateful to invalids in the very highest 

 degree. 



In addition to this, he modified the tortures which had 

 hitherto attended the treatment of certain maladies ; as in 

 quiuzy for instance, the cure of which before his time had been 

 usually effected by the introduction of an instrument' 8 into the 

 throat. He condemned, and with good reason, the indiscrimi- 

 nate use of emetics, which till then had been resorted to in a 



24 See B. vii. c. 37. Apuleius gives the story at considerable length., in 

 the Florida, B. iv. 



25 Asia Minor. Asclepiades was a native of Prusa in Bithynia. 



25* We a( i pt Sillig's suggestion, and read " nimborum altrice," the 

 word " imperatrice " being evidently out of place. The climate of Italy 

 seems to have changed very materially since his day. 



26 See B. ii. c. 51. 27 Set/B. ix. c. 79. 28 " Organo." 



