374 
pliny's natueal history. 
[Book XXIX. 
prescribed diets to his patients in accordance with the move- 
ments of the heavenly bodies, as indicated by the almanacks 
of the mathematicians, takiug observations himself of the 
various times and seasons. It was but recently that he died, 
leaving ten millions of sesterces, after having expended hardly 
a less sum upon building the walls of his native place and 
of other towns. 
It was while these men were ruling our destinies, that 
all at once, Charmis, a native also of Massilia, took^^ the 
City by surprise. JSTot content with condemning the practice 
of preceding physicians, he proscribed the use of warm baths 
as well, and persuaded people, in the very depth of winter 
even, to immerse themselves in cold water. His patients 
he used to plunge into large vessels filled with cold water, 
and it was a common thing to see aged men of consular 
rank make it a matter of parade to freeze themselves ; a 
method of treatment, in favour of which Annseus^^ Seneca gives 
his personal testimony, in writings still extant. 
There can be no doubt whatever, that all these men, in the 
pursuit of celebrity by the in troduction of some novelty or other, 
made purchase of it at the downright expense of human life. 
Hence those woeful discussions, those consultations at the bed- 
side of the patient, where no one thinks fit to be of the same 
opinion as another, lest he may have the appearance of being 
subordinate to another ; hence, too, that ominous inscription 
to be read upon a tomb, *^It was the multitude of physicians 
that killed me.^^s 
The medical art, so often modified and renewed as it has 
been, is still on the change from day to day, and still are we 
impelled onwards by the puffs^^ which emanate from the in- 
genuity of the Greeks. It is quite evident too, that every 
one among them that finds himself skilled in the art of speech, 
may forthwith create himself the arbiter of our life and death : 
as though, forsooth, there were not thousands^* of nations who 
'30 "Invasit." 
Ep. 53 and 83. His " adstipulatio " is of a very equivocal character, 
liowever. 
^''^ " Turba medicorum peril." This is supposed to be borrowed from a 
jjoe of Menander — 
UoXXtTiv LaTpuiv iiffodoQ ^* andjXetrev. 
2* "Flatu." 
24 Herodotus states this with reference to the Babylonians ; Strabo, the 
