370 
BOOK XXIX. 
REMEDIES DEUIVED FROM LIVING CEEATUEES. 
CHAP. 1. (1.) THE OllIGIN 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^ has hitherto 
treated of this subject in the Latin tongue, and that if ail 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,^ 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 
u-Ssculapius was struck by lightning for presuming to raise Tyn- 
dareus^ to life. And this example notwithstanding, it hajs not 
hesitated to relate how that others, through its agency, have 
si nee been restored to life . Already enj oying celebrity in the days 
1 He must surely have forgotten Celsus ; unless, indeed, Pliny was un- 
acquainted with his treatise De Medicina." 
Apollo and ^sculapius, Agenor, Hercules, Chiron, and others. 
3 The husband of Leda, and the father of Castor, Timandra, Clytsem- 
nestra, and Philonoe. Hippolytus also was fabled to have been raised from 
the dead by jEsculapius. 
