Ghap. 8.] CHANGES EFFECTED I3Y ASCLEPIADES. 
157 
knowledge only to be acquired by personal examination and 
actual experience — as a matter of course, he was obliged to 
renounce all previously-established theories, and to trust rather 
to his flowing periods and his well-studied discourses, for 
gaining an influence upon the minds of his audience. 
Eeducing the whole art of medicine to an estimation solely 
of primary causes, he made it nothing but a merely con- 
jectural art, and established it as his creed, that there are five 
great principles of treatment for all diseases in common ; diet, 
use or non^use of wine, frictions, exercise on foot, and ex- 
ercised^ in a carriage or on horseback. As every one perceived 
that each of these methods of treatment lay quite within his 
own reach, all, of course, witl). the greatest readiness gave 
their assent, willing as they were to believe that to be true 
which was so easy of acquisition ; and hence it was that he 
attracted nearly all the world about him, as though he had 
been sent among mankind on a special mission from heaven. 
CHAP. 8. THE CHANGES EFFECTED BY ASCLEPIADES IK THE 
PEACTICE OF MEDICINE. 
In addition to this, he had a wonderful tact in gaining the 
full confidence of his patients : sometimes he would make them 
a promise of wine, and then seize the opportune moment for 
administering it, while on other occasions, again, he would 
prescribe cold water : indeed, as Herophilus, among the an- 
cients, had been the first to enquire into the primary causes of 
disease, and Cleophantus had brought into notice the treat- 
ment of diseases by wine, so did Asclepiades, as we learn from 
M. Yarro, prefer to be indebted for his surname and repute 
to the extensive use made by him of cold water as a 
remedy. He employed also various other soothing remedies 
for his patients ; thus, for instance, it was he that introduced 
swinging beds, the motion of which might either lull the 
malady, or induce sleep, as deemed desirable. It was he, 
too, that brought baths into such general use, — a method of 
treatment that was adopted with the greatest avidity — in 
addition to numerous other modes of treatment of a pleasant 
and soothing nature. Ey these means he acquired a great 
professional reputation, and a no less extended fame ; which 
^ Gestationes exercise on horseback, in a litter, or in a carriage 
drawn by horses. 
