A celebrated disciple of Asclepiades was _Themison_, of Laodicea (b.c. 50), who was led by the teachings of his master to{045} lay the foundation of the so-called _Methodism_ as opposed to _Dogmatism_ in the school of Cos. By him and his followers a very arbitrary arrangement of diseases was made, according to what they considered the constrictive, or contractive; the fluxionary,--congested or relaxed; and the mixed forms. From this division of diseases it appears that, according to the methodists, there were only two kinds of therapeutic indications to follow,--namely, to relax where there was constriction, to constrict where there was relaxation. They, however, admitted a third creditable result, which they called prophylactic; but the pure methodists, such as Ccelius Aurelianus, admitted neither specific disease nor specific remedies, and erased from their materia medica purgatives, diuretics, emmenagogues, nauseants, etc. According to the methodist doctrine, the study of medicine was so abridged that one of its prominent exponents said that he felt able to teach the whole of medical science in six months. It made rapid progress, and consequently was most attractive to the numerous young neophytes who were anxious to finish their apprenticeship and hasten into practice. It is not one of the smallest of the services which Galen rendered to his time and to posterity that he demolished the sophistry of the methodists, demonstrated the insufficiency of their practice, and brought to bear upon them the wittiest satire, calling them the asses of Thessaly, alluding thereby to their lack of literature and medical instruction. In summing up, then, the basis for the various systems of medicine during this period of antiquity, it is seen that the most ancient doctrine of all--_Dogmatism_--directs our attention especially to the animal economy in health and disease; that it took account of the union of vital forces, of sympathies in the organism, and of nature's efforts to repel both internal and external deleterious influences, which{046} providential tendency manifests itself especially in certain acute diseases. This was the strong side of dogmatism. Its weak side consisted in this: that it was held that the causes of diseases inhere in the access of certain qualities and humors along with organic forces,--such as dryness or moisture in combination with bile or atrabile,--and the treatment was directed against these supposed causes. It was on account of this weakness that the enemies of dogmatism attacked it. The empirics opposed the idea that inaccessible and occult causes of disease could become the basis for rational treatment. They affirmed that there was no consistent relation of antagonism or similitude between the disease and the remedies which cured it.