_Methods of Treatment Adopted by Asclepiades._--The prevailing methods of treating diseases in Rome were not approved by Asclepiades, and he lost no opportunity of giving expression to this disapproval. In the first place, he protested vigorously against the practice of prescribing on every possible occasion purgatives and remedies capable of producing vomiting. He had a decided preference for gentler measures, his idea being that a physician should cure his patients _tuto, celeriter, et jucunde_--safely, quickly and agreeably. Le Clerc adds that this is a fine sentiment, but that its realization in actual practice is something which most physicians find it very difficult to attain. Asclepiades condemned strongly the employment of magical remedies, a practice which was still much in use at that time in Rome, although it was already less common than it had previously been. Cato’s collection of household remedies contains a short list of some of these appeals to man’s superstition.[29] In addition to the remedial measures mentioned above, Asclepiades placed his chief dependence on the following: abstinence from meat; the employment of wine under certain well-defined circumstances; massage and frictions; baths of different kinds (it is said that he devised a great variety); walking; driving and being carried about in the open air in a litter or in a boat on a quiet river or in the protected harbor. One of his remedies in the case of sleeplessness consisted in having the patient placed in a suspended couch which could easily be rocked from side to side. As all these measures were agreeable and could at the same time easily be employed by almost everybody, they met with general favor, and in consequence Asclepiades was looked upon by the Romans as “a person sent from heaven.” As a rule, he recommended the drinking of simple water, but in certain cases (to be mentioned farther on) he did not hesitate to advise the taking of wine in moderation. He advocated tracheotomy, in cases of inflammation of the throat, in preference to the then prevailing practice--both very painful and quite difficult to carry out--of introducing a tube of some kind as a means of opening a passage for the entrance of air into the lungs.