533 



of the dialogues of Plato, which elucidates the whole system 

 of the practice of medicine by regular physicians and by slaves; 

 and it is singular that those who defended the medical art 

 should have overlooked a passage which would have at once 

 decided the point at issue. The dialogue is supposed to be 

 between an Athenian and a Cretan. I extract as much of it 

 as is sujfficient for my purpose: 



" ' Athenian. — We say that some are physicians, and 

 others the servants (uTrjjptVat) of physicians ; and these last we 

 likewise call, in a certain respect, physicians. Do we not ? 



" ' Cretan. — Entirely so. 



" ' Athenian. — And do we not call them so, whether 

 they are free or servants, who, through the orders of their 

 masters, have acquired the art of medicine, both according to 

 theory and experience, but are not naturally physicians like 

 those who are free, who have both learned the art from them- 

 selves, and instructed their children in it ; or do you consider 

 them as forming two kinds of physicians? 



" « Cretan. — Why should I not ? 



" ' Athenian. — Do you therefore understand that when, 

 in a city, both servants and those who are free are sick, ser- 

 vants are for the most part cured by servants (SovXoig), who 

 visit the multitude of the sick, and are dihgently employed in 

 the dispensaries (tarp£to<e), and this without assigning or re- 

 ceiving any reason respecting the several diseases of servants ; 

 but what they have found by experience to be efficacious, they 

 tyrannically prescribe for their patients, as if they possessed ac- 

 curate knowledge, and this in an arrogant manner, hurrying 

 from one diseased servant to another, by this means faciHta^ 

 ting their master's attention to the sick. But the free-bom 

 physician, for the most part, heals and considers the diseases 

 of those that are freeborn.'* 



" Such was the state of things three centuries and a half 



• Taylor's Translation. 



