There is a disagreement; for some reject destructive practices, calling to witness Hippocrates, who says, “I will give nothing whatever destructive” and deeming it the special province of medicine to guard and preserve what nature generates. Another party maintains the same view, but makes this distinction, viz.: that the fruit of conception is not to be destroyed at will because of adultery or of care for beauty, but is to be destroyed to avert danger impending at parturition, if the uterus be small and cannot subserve the perfecting of the fruit, or have hard swellings and cracks at its mouth, or if some similar condition prevail. This party says the same thing about preventing conception, and with it I agree. (Translated from the Greek by the late John G. Curtis, M.D., of New York.) Soranus was not only a great obstetrician,--admitted by all the authorities to have been the greatest in ancient times,--he was also in high repute for the work which he did in other departments of medicine--in gynaecology, for example, in the instruction of midwives, in the management of children’s diseases, in the diagnosis and treatment of both acute and chronic diseases, in surgery, etc. While in general he adhered to the fundamental teachings of the Methodists, he did not hesitate to depart from the beaten pathway of that sect in his explanations of certain pathological conditions; for he was more of a clinical observer than a sectarian, and it was probably his independent manner of thinking that gave the sect new vigor and thus enabled it to live on through such a long period of time. Galen, who was not at all disposed to speak favorably of the Methodists, says that he tried a number of the remedies recommended by Soranus and found them good.