It appears that the name of the Celtic priests (“druids”) had become subject to the same abuse as the name of the Median priests of sacerdotal caste. Thus we learn of female fortune-tellers of the third century, A.D., who call themselves “druidesses.” But it seems that this application of the word “druid” has remained a local one and strictly limited, whereas the expression “magician,” quite generally employed, became, in the course of time, the designation of charlatans and medical impostors. For these swindlers, who carried on medico-physical hocuspocus, and who claimed to exercise supernatural powers, were called “magicians” during the entire period of classic antiquity, and we find the same use of the word in the middle ages, and sometimes also in more modern times. But this profession of magician, which sprang from priesthood, has largely promoted superstition in medicine, and was particularly instrumental in bringing it into extraordinary repute. It is our intention to concern ourselves a little more minutely with magicians and magic. §2. =The Spread of the Word “Magic.”=—How and when magic was transplanted from its Oriental home to the Occident can not be determined with certainty; for the Greeks, as well as all antique peoples, probably all nations, had a belief in ghosts and demons, in fortune-telling, and in sorcery. But it appears, nevertheless, that the ancient civilized peoples of the Orient, and particularly the Persians, cultivated the magic arts with especial devotion, and it is more than probable that it was from the East that the prevailing cult of magic had been imported into the West. Pliny, for one, tells us (Book 30, Chapter I., § 8) that magic was brought to Europe by a certain Osthanes, who accompanied King Xerxes on his military expedition against Greece. This man Osthanes, as Pliny reports further, is said to have disseminated the seeds of this supernatural art (_velut semina artis portentosæ insparsit_) wherever he went, and with such success that the Hellenic peoples were actually mad after it, and prominent men traveled through parts of the Orient, there to acquire personally and thoroughly these magic arts, thus, as was the case with Pythagoras, Empedocles, Democritus, and Plato. In fact, it is said of Democritus that he opened the tomb of a celebrated magician—Dardanus of Phœnicia—that he might restore to publicity the mysterious writings of the latter. It appears, moreover, that Alexander the Great entertained an implicit belief in magic—at least, Pliny reports that during his wars he was always accompanied by a celebrated magician.