It is rather difficult to believe that a man so full of conceit and so unjust in his criticisms of his predecessors as Thessalus clearly was, could be capable of formulating such a concise statement of the nature of chronic ulcers and such a practical rule for their proper treatment. His development of the idea of “metasyncrisis”--or renovation of the body (_recorporatio_), as Caelius Aurelianus translates the word--seems to have been original with Thessalus.[34] The Methodists, it should be added, deserve special credit for having been the first to introduce and carry into effect the systematic treatment of chronic diseases; and, as a general proposition, it may be said that their treatment of all forms of disease was thoroughly practical, free from all tendency to resort to magical methods, and based largely on the employment of such hygienic measures as the use of baths of different kinds (hydrotherapy), massage, moderate outdoor exercise, passive movements, sea voyages, fasting, regulation of the diet, etc. One of the favorite practices--of which Thessalus was said to have been the originator--was to begin the treatment of almost all maladies by prescribing an abstinence from all food for a period of three full days. When I come to speak of Soranus and Caelius Aurelianus I shall probably have occasion to give further details regarding the methods of treatment employed by the Methodists. As a system, says Neuburger, Methodism was not capable of inaugurating any fundamental advances in medicine; the most that it was able to accomplish was to broaden and otherwise improve the domain of therapeutics, and some of its wiser members were diligent in collecting and sifting critically a large number of valuable experiences, which were then courteously registered by them to the credit of the sect. CHAPTER XIII THE FURTHER HISTORY OF METHODISM AT ROME, AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF TWO NEW SECTS, VIZ., THE PNEUMATISTS AND THE ECLECTICS.--A GENERAL SURVEY OF THE SUBJECT OF SECTS IN MEDICINE Among the Methodists there were many physicians who attained more or less distinction during their professional career, but only two of them, beside those whose contributions to medical knowledge have already been mentioned in these pages, gained sufficient celebrity to justify me in devoting some additional space to the description of the work which they accomplished. Soranus, of Ephesus on the coast of Asia Minor, and Caelius Aurelianus, of Sicca in the north of Africa, are the physicians to whom I have reference.