346 THE EARLY HISTORY OF VETEHINARY MEDICINE. 
prescriptions, or superficial descriptions of disease. Both of 
them voluntarily acknowledge the merit of Apsyrtus, and derive 
most of their information from their epistolary correspondence 
with him. 
Of all these veterinarians, Hierocles, after Apsyrtus, wrote 
the most, and seems to have been the only man of good edu¬ 
cation. He lived, probably, about the end of the fourth century, 
or, at the latest, about the beginning of the fifth. He profited 
much by the works of Apsyrtus, and often quotes them word for 
word. He was by profession an advocate, but he pursued the 
veterinary art with especial zeal. His descriptions are clear. 
His prescriptions, calculated to effect their desired purpose, are 
from Apsyrtus. Apsyrtus and Hierocles give some directions 
wdth regard to grooming the horse w'hich furnish us with in¬ 
structive information concerning this branch of rural economy 
among the Greeks. The same notions, as to the points of the 
horse most connected wdth usefulness and beauty, were held 
now as were maintained by Xenophon nearly seven hundred 
years before. 
As to the other veterinarians of whom the unknown author 
of Constantine’s collection has preserved some fragments, we 
cannot determine the age in which they lived, and we know 
little more than their names. He who has least merit among 
them is Pelagonius, an empiric, probably of the fourth century. 
He recommends the strangest modes of treating some diseases, 
worthy only of the superstition of the lowest classes. He pre¬ 
scribes a decoction of swallows’ nests for ophthalmia. He boasts 
of the efficacy of the ashes of young swans burned alive, given 
interiorly, mixed with wine, for pestilential fever in horses: in a 
word, we may call him the Marcellus—the empiric of veterinary 
medicine. 
Theomnertus, who could not have lived later than the fourth 
century, professed to cure rabies in dogs by depriving them of 
food for a day, and then giving them hellebore. He relates 
very seriously that, when deer are tormented with worms that 
crawl into the gullet, they swallow serpents who eat up the 
w'orras. For worms in horses, he recommends, as the most 
