whose opinions have been directly opposed to one another have equally restored their patients to health; they did not derive their methods of cure from studying the occult causes about which they disputed, but from the experience they had of the remedies which they employed upon their patients. Medicine was not first discovered in consequence of reasoning, but the theory was sought for after the discovery of medicine. Does reason, they ask, prescribe the same as experience, or something different? If the same, it must be needless; if different, it must be mischievous. In the third and second centuries before Christ, many physicians wrote commentaries on diseases and attacked the teaching of Hippocrates. Among these, _Serapion of Alexandria_, an Empiric who lived in the third century before Christ, is noteworthy for having first used sulphur in the treatment of skin diseases, and Heraclides wrote on strangulated hernia. Serapion added somewhat to the system of Philinus, and was responsible for introducing the principle of analogy into the system of Empiricism. The foundation of Empiricism marked the decline of the medical school of Alexandria. We are indebted to Celsus for a full description of the teaching of this sect, and, at the same time, for an exposure of its fallacies. Serapion was a convert from the school of Cos, which was the stronghold of medical dogmatism, and, like nearly all apostates, he was consumed with animosity and bitterness towards those with whom he had formerly been in agreement. Cnidos was the stronghold of the Empirics. FOOTNOTES: [7] "The Medical Profession in Ancient Times." Watson, p. 90. [8] Arctinus: "Ethiopis," Translated in Puschmann's "Hist. Med. Education." [9] Pliny, "Hist. Nat.," xxvi, 6. [10] "De Med.," Præfat. (Translation.) CHAPTER V. ROMAN MEDICINE AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC AND THE BEGINNING OF THE EMPIRE. Asclepiades of Prusa--Themison of Laodicea--Methodism--Wounds of Julius Cæsar--Systems of Philosophy--State of the country--Roman quacks--Slaves and Freedmen--Lucius Horatillavus. _Asclepiades of Prusa_, in Bithynia, was a famous physician in Rome early in the first century before Christ. He studied both rhetoric and medicine at Alexandria and at Athens. He began as a teacher of rhetoric in Rome, but, although he was the friend of Cicero, he was not very successful, and abandoned this study for the practice of medicine. He had a great deal of ability and shrewdness, but no knowledge of anatomy or physiology, and he condemned all who thought that these subjects of study were the foundation of the healing art. He specially inveighed against Hippocrates, and with some reason, for the disciples of Hippocrates had elevated the teaching of their master almost into a religion, and were bound far too closely to his authority, to the exclusion of original thought and progress.