We know that this plague did not expend its fury in Greece during one season, and then was no more heard of; but on the contrary, we learn that it continued to lurk about in Athens and elsewhere, and sometimes broke out anew with all its original severity. Thucydides briefly mentions a second attack of the plague at Athens about two years after the first,[31] attended with a frightful degree of mortality; nor is it at all improbable that this was not the last visitation of the malady. Though the name of Hippocrates, then, may not have been heard of at its first invasion, it is not at all unlikely that, after he had risen to the head of his profession in Greece, as we know that he subsequently did, he should have been publicly consulted regarding the treatment of the most formidable disease which was prevailing at the time.[32] What adds an appearance of truth to the tale is, that several of the genuine works of Hippocrates, which were probably published in its lifetime, relate to the causes and treatment of epidemic and endemic diseases.[33] That the magistrates of Athens, then, should have applied to him as the most eminent authority on the subject, to assist them in their sanitary regulations[34] during the prevalence of this great pestilence, is so far from being improbable, that I think it would have been very extraordinary if they had omitted to consult him, seeing that he was undoubtedly looked up to as the _facile princeps_ among the physicians of the day. That his services in this way have been exaggerated by the blind admiration of his worshipers, both at that time and in after ages, may be readily admitted; but this circumstance ought not to make us reject the whole story as being fabulous. I repeat, then, that although this part of the history of Hippocrates be not vouched by any contemporary evidence, it is by no means devoid of probability, while the objections which have been started to it by modern authorities have not so much weight as is generally supposed.