In the progress of civilization, various fortuitous incidents[14], and even errors in the choice and preparation of aliments, must gradually have unfolded the remedial powers of many natural substances: these were recorded, and the authentic history of medicine may date its commencement from the period when such records began. We are told by Herodotus, that the Chaldeans and Babylonians carried their sick to the public roads and markets, that travellers might converse with them, and communicate any remedies which had been successfully used in similar cases; this custom continued during many ages in Assyria: Strabo states that it also prevailed among the ancient Lusitanians, or Portuguese: in this manner, however, the results of experience descended only by oral tradition. It was in the temple of Æsculapius in Greece, that medical information was first recorded; diseases and cures were then registered on durable tablets of marble; the priests and priestesses, who were the guardians of the temple, prepared the remedies and directed their application; and as these persons were ambitious to pass for the descendants of Æsculapius, they assumed the name of the Asclepiades. The writings of Pausanias, Philostratus, and Plutarch, abound with the artifices of those early physicians. Aristophanes describes in a truly comic manner, the craft and pious avarice of these godly men, and mentions the dexterity and promptitude with which they collected and put into bags the offerings on the altar. The patients, during this period, reposed on the skins of sacrificed rams, in order that they might procure celestial visions. As soon as they were believed to be asleep, a priest, clothed in the dress of Æsculapius, imitating his manners, and accompanied by the daughters of the God, that is, by young actresses, thoroughly instructed in their parts, entered and delivered a medical opinion. _Definition of Amulets, &c._ All remedies working as it were sympathetically, and plainly unequal to the effect, may be termed Amulets; whether used at a distance by another person, or immediately about the patient: of these various are related. By the Jews, they were called _Kamea_; by the Greeks, _Phylacteries_, as already mentioned; and by the Latins, _Amuleta_ or _Ligatura_; by the Catholics, _Agnus Dei_, or consecrated relicts, and by the natives of Guinea, where they are still held in great veneration, _Fetishes_. Different kinds of materials by these different people, have been venerated and supposed capable of preserving from danger and infection, as well as to remove diseases when actually present. Plutarch relates of Pericles, an Athenian general, that when a friend came to see him, and inquiring after his health, he reached out his hand and shewed him his Amulet; by which he meant to intimate the truth of his illness, and, at the same time, the confidence he placed in these ordinary remedies.