156 
plixy's JSATUKAL histoey. 
[Book XXVI. 
fixed and determinate classes of maladies, already more than 
three hundred in number, that he must have new forms jof 
disease to alarm him as well ? And then, in addition to all 
these, not less in number are the troubles and misfortunes which 
man brings upon himself ! 
The remedies which I am here describing, are those which 
were universally employed in ancient times, I^Tature herself, 
so to say, making up the medicines : indeed, for a long time 
these were the only medicines employed. 
(2.) Hippocrates,^® it is well known, was the first to com- 
pile a code of medical precepts, a thing which he did with the 
greatest perspicuity, as his treatises, we find, are replete with 
information upon the various plants. 'No less is the informa- 
tion which we gain from the works of Diodes of Carystus, 
second onl}^ in reputation, as well as date, to Hippocrates. 
The same, too, with reference to the works of Praxagoras, 
Chrysippus, and, at a later period, Erasistratus^^ of Cos. 
Herophilus^^ too, though himself the founder of a more refined 
system of medicine, was extremelj^ profuse of his commenda- 
tions of the use of simples. At a later period, however, expe- 
rience, our most efficient instructor in all things, medicine in 
particular, gradually began to be lost sight of in mere words 
and verbiage : it being found, in fact, much more agreeable 
to sit in schools, and to listen to the talk of a professor, than 
to go a simpling in the deserts, and to be searching for this 
plant or that at all the various seasons of the year. 
CHAP. 7. (3.) THE NEW SYSTEM OF MEDICINE: ASCLEPIADES 
THE PHYSICIAN. 
Still, however, the ancient theories remained unshaken, 
based as they were upon the still existing grounds of uni- 
versally acknowledged experience ; until, in the time of Pom- 
peius Magnus, Asclepiades,^^ a professor of rhetoric, who 
considered himself not sufficiently repaid by that pursuit, and 
wiiose readiness and sagacity rendered him better adapted for 
any other than forensic practice, suddenly turned his attention 
to the medical art. Having never practised medicine, and 
being totally unacquainted with the nature of remedies — a 
1^ See B. xxix. c. i. See end of B. xx. 
20 See B. xxix. c. 3. 21 B. xxix. c. 5. 
22 See end of B. vii. 
