Gymnastic medicine was founded by Herodicus; games and sports had been early instituted in the Grecian states, and were divided into religious, military, athletic, and lastly medical gymnastics, particularly adapted for the prevention or cure of diseases. Herodicus, from his own observations on its advantages, commenced practising as a physician, and it was his only panacea. After him came Hippocrates, who made the first successful attempt to separate the medical profession from rash empiricism, and the frivolous dreams of philosophers. He compared the body to a circle, in which an universal sympathy of parts existed; his great repute arose from his skill in predicting crises, which he was enabled to do with perfect precision. Pliny says Rome was inhabited six hundred years before any physicians established themselves there; and for some time the medicine of the Romans consisted of charms, fascinations, incantations, and amulets. The book of Cato de Re Rustica, is a proof of the gross superstition and ignorance of those times. He proposed in a case of fracture to have it bound up, and the following words sung every day--“Huat, Hanat, ista pista, fista, dominabo, damnastra et luxata.” When the religious frenzy of the Mahometans was abated, and they became enriched by commerce, arts and literature, after ages of barbarism, were again cultivated with great industry, and the medical profession, in particular, was rewarded and encouraged with rank and bountiful endowments. Ætius complained in his time of the general use of quack medicines, nostrums, &c., and of the immense price demanded for those which were fortunate enough to rise into general repute. Danaus, he tells us, sold his collyrium, at Constantinople, at the astonishing price of one hundred and twenty pieces of gold to each patient, and sometimes could scarcely be persuaded upon to sell it at any price. Nicostratus demanded no less than two talents for his celebrated isotheosis, or antidote against the colic. The works of the Grecian and Arabian physicians, when they came to be more generally known in the fifteenth century, were most highly prized. In the year 1471, Louis XI. borrowed the works of Rhazes from the Paris faculty, but was obliged, previously, to deposit a quantity of plate, and find a nobleman to join with him, as an additional security for the care and safe return of the book. Jew physicians were at that time employed by the Pope, and most of the crowned heads in Europe. John of Gaddesden was the first Englishman appointed Court Physician in London. His idea of the treatment of diseases was rather different from the theories of the present day; for when attending the king’s son for smallpox, he directed the room to be hung with scarlet cloth, and the patient to be rolled up in similar stuff.