No treatises on disease existed anterior to his time to aid him in his investigations of the phenomena of nature, although it is true that in the Asclepion or temple of Esculapius at Cos, records were kept and votive tablets preserved commemorative of cures performed, and of the remedies by which they were effected. But if the physician admires his talents, the moralist does honour to the qualities of his mind and the goodness of his heart. Benevolent and disinterested, pious towards the gods, and incorruptibly devoted to his country, he instructed his fellow men, not by shedding maudlin tears over their follies, like Heraclides, nor by the coarse laughter of his friend Democritus, but by a calm and even walk of life, mitigating sorrow by his skill, and showing the form and beauty of virtue by his example. His portrait of a worthy physician may well serve for his own likeness, and in its description we shall observe that the exalted principles of professional ethics therein inculcated, are as strictly applicable to our own times as they were to those which he himself enlightened and adorned. His words are:—“The physician who is an honour to his profession, is he who has merited the public esteem by profound knowledge, long experience, consummate integrity, and irreproachable life; who, esteeming all the wretched as equals in the eyes of the Divine Being, hastens to their assistance, speaks with mildness, listens with attention, bears with their impatience, and inspires that confidence which sometimes of itself restores life; sensibly alive to their sufferings, carefully studies the causes and progress of the complaint; not disconcerted by unforseen accidents, but, in emergencies, having exhausted his own resources, holds it a duty to call in his brethren of the healing art to assist him with their advice. Having struggled with all his strength against the malady, he is happy and modest in success, and in failure congratulates himself that he has, at least, alleviated the sufferings of his patient.” One of the great obstacles to the advancement of anatomy and physiology was the universal reverence for the dead which the Greeks and Romans shared in common with all the people of antiquity. Among the Jews, to touch a dead body exposed the offender to a penance of seven days’ exclusion and privation from the ordinary comforts of life; and it is almost superfluous to add, that the Egyptians made this reverence a part of their religion.