As might be expected, some of the less reverent of the Greek writers found subjects for satire in the worship of Æsculapius. Aristophanes in one of his comedies makes a servant relate how his master, Plautus, who was blind, was restored to sight at the Æsculapian temple. Having placed their offerings on the altar and performed other ceremonies, this servant says that Plautus and he laid down on beds of straw. When the lights were extinguished the priest came round and enjoined them to sleep and to keep silence if they should hear any noise. Later the god himself came and wiped the eyes of Plautus with a piece of white linen. Panacea followed him and covered the face of Plautus with a purple veil. Then on a signal from the deity two serpents glided under the veil, and having licked his eyes Plautus recovered his sight. It cannot be doubted that in the course of the centuries a large amount of empiric knowledge was accumulated at these temples, and probably the pretence of supernatural aid was far more rare than we suppose. In an exhaustive study of the subject recently published by Dr. Aravintinos, of Athens, that authority expresses the opinion that the temples served as hospitals for all kinds of sufferers, and that arrangements were provided in them for prolonged treatment. He thinks that in special cases the treatment was carried out during the mysterious sleep, when it was desired to keep from the patient an exact knowledge of what was being done; but generally he supposes a course of normal medication or hygiene was followed. Forty-two inscriptions have been discovered, but on analysing these Dr. Aravintinos comes to the conclusion that they record in most cases only cures effected by rational means, and not by miracles. He finds massage, purgatives, emetics, diaphoresis, bleeding, baths, poulticing, and such like methods indicated, and though the sleeps, possibly hypnotic, are often mentioned, this is not by any means the case invariably. About a century before Hippocrates wrote and practised, the Asclepiads began to reveal their secrets. The revolt against the mysteries and trickeries of the temples was incited by the infidelity to their oaths of certain of the Italian disciples of Pythagoras. The school of philosophy and medicine founded by that mystic aimed also to keep his doctrines secret, but when the colony he had established at Crotona, in South Italy, was dispersed by the attacks of the mob, a number of the initiates travelled about under the title of Periodeutes practising medicine often in close proximity to an Æsculapian temple. The first of the Asclepiads to yield to this competition were those of Cnidos, but the school of Cos was not long after them. The direct ancestors of Hippocrates were among the teachers of the temple who became eager to make known the accumulated science in their possession, and thus by the time when the famous teacher was born (460 B.C.) the world was ripe for his intellect to have free play.