This last attribute would show that the Shumiro-Accads had noticed the hygienic properties of fire, which does indeed help to dispel miasmas on account of the strong ventilation which a great blaze sets going. Thus at a comparatively late epoch, some 400 years B.C., a terrible plague broke out at Athens, the Greek city, and Hippocrates, a physician of great genius and renown, who has been called "the Father of Medicine," tried to diminish the contagion by keeping huge fires continually blazing at different points of the city. It is the same very correct idea which made men invoke Gibil as he who purifies the works of man. He is also frequently called "the protector of the dwelling, of the family," and praised for "creating light in the house of darkness," and for bringing peace to all creation. Over and above these claims to gratitude, Gibil had a special importance in the life of a people given to the works of metallurgy, of which fire is the chief agent: "It is thou," says one hymn, "who mixest tin and copper, it is thou who purifiest silver and gold." Now the mixture of tin and copper produces bronze, the first metal which has been used to make weapons and tools of, in most cases long before iron, which is much more difficult to work, and as the quality of the metal depends on the proper mixture of the two ingredients, it is but natural that the aid of the god Fire should have been specially invoked for the operation. But Fire is not only a great power on earth, it is also, in the shape of Lightning, one of the dreadest and most mysterious powers of the skies, and as such sometimes called son of Ana (Heaven), or, in a more roundabout way, "the Hero, son of the Ocean"--meaning the celestial Ocean, the great reservoir of rains, from which the lightning seems to spring, as it flashes through the heavy showers of a Southern thunder storm. In whatever shape he appear, and whatever his functions, Gibil is hailed as an invariably beneficent and friendly being.