528 



the cure of one patient, to be paid 200,000 sesterces, or 

 £1941. Erasistratus, being consulted on tlie case of Anti- 

 ochus Soter, received 100 talents, which in Syrian money 

 would be equal to £807 5s. lOd. of our's. It need scarcely 

 be observed, that such men as these could not have been 

 slaves. We have a very different account of a physician's fee 

 in some verses preserved by Diogenes Laertius, where it is said 

 to be one drachma for a visit, or in our money seven pence 

 three farthings. Perhaps this was the fee of a slave physician, 

 when not prescribing for his master. 



" A fact stated by Pliny, incidentally, assigns the reason 

 that slave physicians were so common ; he says, ' that although 

 in other professions a strict inquiry was instituted with regard 

 to competency, there was none in the case of physicians :' 

 hence any one, no matter how ignorant, might practise as 

 such. But those who intended to qualify themselves regu- 

 larly for the profession of medicine, became, according to the 

 custom of the times, the pupils of experienced teachers. 

 Thus, Themisson was pupil of Asclepiades; Seraplon of 

 Alexandria studied under Herophilus, pupil of Praxagoras ; 

 Erasistratus was pupil of Chrysippus ; Prodicus, of Hippo- 

 crates ; and Hippocrates, of Democritus. The prince of phy- 

 sicians derived part of his knowledge from the tablets in the 

 temple of Esculapius at Cos, on which were recorded all remark- 

 able cures. The temple was, in some time after, burned, along 

 with its records ; but the latter were preserved in the me- 

 mory of Hippocrates, so far, at least, as related to dietetic me- 

 dicine ; for Strabo mentions, that cures effected by that kind 

 of practice were those he selected. Many of the regular 

 physicians studied in the celebrated university of Alexandria, 

 founded 320 years before the Christian era, where students 

 could avail themselves of the best instruction which the world 

 then afforded. There were in its library, at one time, no less 

 than 700,000 volumes, the unfortunate fate of which is well 

 known. Up to this time, no dissections of the human body 



