About this time the Empirics formed themselves into a distinct sect and became the declared opponents of the Dogmatists. The controversy really consisted in the question, “How far we are to suffer theory to influence over practice.” While the Dogmatists, or as they were sometimes styled, the Rationalists, asserted that before attempting to treat any disease we ought to make ourselves fully acquainted with the structure and functions of the body generally, with the operation of medicinal agents upon it, and with the changes which it undergoes when under the operation of any morbid cause, the Empirics, on the contrary, contended that this knowledge is impossible to be obtained and if possible is not necessary; that our sole guide must be experience and that if we step beyond this, either as learned from our own observations or that of others on whose testimony we can rely, we are always liable to fall into dangerous and often fatal errors. According to Celsus, the founder of the Empirics was Serapion, who was said to be a pupil of Herophilus. At this period, and for some centuries later, all physicians were included in one or the other of these rival sects, and from the evidence of history the two sects or schools were about equal. From Phiny, who wrote about the middle and sixth, seventh and eighth decades of the first century, we learn that medicine was introduced into Rome at a later period than the other arts and sciences. The first person who seems to have made it a distinct profession, separate from priestcraft, was Archagathus, a Peloponnesian, who settled at Rome about B. C. 200. His treatment of his patients was so severe and unsuccessful that he was finally banished, and no other mention is made of a physician at Rome for about a century, when Asclepiades of Bythinia, acquired a great reputation. His popularity depended upon his allowing his patients a liberal use of wine, and of their favorite dishes, and in all respects consulting their inclinations and flattering their prejudices; and hence it is easy to understand the eminence at which he arrived, for we see even in our own time men building up great reputations by similar practices. This man with a long name—Archagathus—was succeeded by his pupil, Themison of Laodicea, the founder of a sect called Methodics, who adopted a middle course between the Dogmatists and Empirics. During the greater part of the first two centuries of our era the Methodics were the preponderating medical sect, and they included in their ranks C. Aurelianus, some of whose writings have come down to us.