The effect of the tendency of the Methodists to classify and simplify all the departments of medicine was not wholly beneficial. It conveyed to many the impression that medicine might readily be learned in the course of a few months, and thus offered the temptation to inferior men to choose the career of physician; and yet, on the other hand, it infused into the art the essentially Roman characteristics of orderliness, simplicity and efficiency. Anatomy, for example, was studied only so far as a knowledge of this department of medicine was necessary to render the physician familiar with the location, general character and relations of the different organs. There was one field, however, in which the adherents of this school displayed a high degree of excellence, viz., in their descriptions of disease; and this is especially true of those written by Caelius Aurelianus (fourth century A. D.), whose manner of handling the subject of differential diagnosis is far more thorough and satisfactory than that of any of the medical authors who preceded him. In their treatment of disease, the Methodists were largely guided by the principle of _contraria contrariis_,--_i.e._, in those cases in which, to the best of their belief, a _status laxus_ existed, they administered astringents, in the hope of thereby bringing the parts back more nearly to a contracted condition; and, _vice versa_, when the diagnosis of _status strictus_ was made, they gave a relaxing medicine. The terms “laxatives” and “astringents,” which are still applied to many drugs, were originated by the Methodists. Bloodletting, for example, was one of the remedies which they used for producing relaxation, and an astringent was employed when a contrary effect was desired. In the list of relaxing remedial agents (aside from bloodletting) were placed the following: warm baths, poultices, inunctions with warm oil, vapor baths, fasting and a restricted diet, diuretics (very carefully watched and employed only in exceptional cases), emetics, diaphoretics and laxatives. The following agents, on the other hand, were classed as contracting, astringent and tonic remedies: washing with cold water, cold baths, the application of cloths dipped in cold water, living in cold air, strengthening diet, wine, vinegar, alum, narcotics, etc. Themison, it should be added, is the first one among the ancient writers to mention the use of leeches as a means of extracting blood. It does not follow from this, however, that he was the discoverer of this method of local bloodletting; for it is highly probable that this procedure had been in common use for many years previous to his time.