A professional wrestler, who was unsuccessful, in his profession, met Diogenes, the cynic, as we are told, by Diog. Laertius, in Vita, lib. vi. p. 60, and told him, that he had given up wrestling, and taken to physic--"_Well done_," said the philosopher, "_now thou wilt be able to throw those, who have thrown thee_." The revolutions, which took place, in the practice of the healing art, previously to the period, when Pliny composed his Natural History, are certainly remarkable. Chrysippus, as far as he was able, overthrew the system of Hippocrates; Erasistratus overthrew the system of Chrysippus; the Empirics, or experimentalists, overthrew, to the best of their ability, the system of Erasistratus; Herophilus did the very same thing, for the Empirics; Asclepiades turned the tables, upon Herophilus; Vexius Valens next came into vogue, as the leader of a sect; then Thessalus, in Nero's age, opposed all previous systems; the system of Thessalus was overthrown by Crinas of Marseilles; and so on, to the end of the chapter--which chapter, by the way, somewhat resembles the first chapter of Matthew, substituting the word _overthrew_ for the word _begat_. Water doctors certainly existed, in those ancient days. After Crinas, says Pliny, cap. 5, of the same book, there came along one--_damnatis non solum prioribus medicis, verum, et balineis; frigidaque etiam hibernis algoribus lavari persuasit. Mergit ægros in lacus. Videbamus senes consulares usque in ostentationem rigentes. Qua de re exstat etiam Annæi Senecæ stipulatio. Nec dubium est omnes istos famam novitate aliqua aucupantes anima statim nostra negotiari._ Condemning not only all former physicians, but the baths, then in use, he persuaded his patients to use cold water, during the rigors of winter. He plunged sick folks in ponds. We have seen certain aged, consular gentlemen, freezing themselves, from sheer ostentation. We have the personal statement of Annæus Seneca, in proof of this practice. Nor can it be doubted, that those quacks, greedily seeking fame, by the production of some novelty, would readily bargain away any man's life, for lucre. The statement of Seneca, to which Pliny refers, may be found in Seneca's letters, 53, and 83, both to Lucilius; in which he tells his friend, that, according to his old usage, he bathed in the Eurypus, upon the Kalends of January. It would be easy to fill a volume, with the railings of such peevish philosophers, as Michael De Montaigne, against all sorts of physic and physicians. We are very apt to treat doctors and deities, in the same way--to scoff at them, in health, and fly to them, in sickness.