370 



BOOK XXIX. 



REMEDIES DERIVED FROM LIVING CREATURES. 



CHAP. 1. (1.) THE 01UG1N OF THE MEDICAL ART. 



THE nature and multiplicity of the various remedies already 

 described or which still remain to be enlarged upon, compel 

 me to enter upon some further details with reference to the 

 art of medicine itself : aware as I am, that no one 1 has hitherto 

 treated of this subject in the Latin tongue, and that if all new 

 enterprises are difficult or of doubtful success, it must be one in 

 particular which is so barren of all charms to recommend it, 

 and accompanied with such difficulties of illustration. It will 

 not improbably suggest itself, however, to those who are fami- 

 liar with this subject, to make enquiry how it is that in the 

 practice of medicine the use of simples has been abandoned, 

 so convenient as they are and so ready prepared to our hand : 

 and they will be inclined to feel equal surprise and indignation 

 when they are informed that no known art, lucrative as this is 

 beyond all the rest, has been more fluctuating, or subjected to 

 more frequent variations. 



Commencing by ranking its inventors in the number of the 

 gods, 2 and consecrating for them a place in heaven, the art of me- 

 dicine, at the present day even, teaches us in numerous instances 

 to have recourse to the oracles for aid. In more recent times 

 again, the same art has augmented its celebrity, at the cost perhaps 

 of being charged with criminality, by devising the fable that 

 ^Esculapius was struck by lightning for presuming to raise Tyn- 

 dareus 3 to life. And this example notwithstanding, it has not 

 hesitated to relate how that others, through its agency, have 

 since been restored to life. Already enjoying celebrity in the days 



1 He must surely have forgotten Celsus ; unless, indeed, Pliny was un- 

 acquainted with his treatise " De Medicina." 



2 Apollo and JEsculapius, Agenor, Hercules, Chiron, and others. 



3 The husband of Leda, and the father of Castor, Timandra, Clyteem- 

 nestra, and Philonoe. Hippolytus also was fabled to have been raised from 

 the dead by JEsculapius. 



