Among the professional physicians there was a further distinction between those who practised privately and those who had official positions. The former either gave their advice at home or else visited their patients. Slight invalids, who were able to go out, generally visited the physician in his consulting hours, and there they received not only advice but sometimes also direct treatment, since other apartments for bathing, operating, etc., were connected with the consulting room, and the physician also prepared and dispensed his medicines here. Even those who were very ill, as, for instance, the wounded Lamachus in the “Acharnians” of Aristophanes, were carried straight to the doctor when the case was pressing. Of course a very celebrated physician could not himself treat all his patients, and he therefore employed assistants in his consulting room, who also accompanied him when he paid visits abroad, in order to profit by the master’s experience at the sick bed; and it may not have been very pleasant for the patients when the doctor thus arrived in company of a not inconsiderable troop of students. It was still more unpleasant, however, if want of means compelled them to resort to inferior assistants, who sometimes were even slaves. These slave doctors were not only summoned to the slave population, but they also treated free people, chiefly those who were too poor to pay a high fee. Of these it was said that they differed from the better physicians, who were careful and who studied and watched their patients, in paying very hasty visits, scarcely taking time to inquire after the nature of the illness, and hurrying on after giving any directions that might occur to them. Sometimes a citizen had one of his slaves taught the healing art by some physician, supposing he showed any ability for this profession, and by this means he had someone in the house who, in case of need, could supply help at once. The position of the Greek slaves, especially in Attica, was a comparatively free one, and therefore we must not be surprised that they were willing to entrust the welfare of their body to a slave, seeing that they even left much of the moral training of their children to him. Complaints were often made, too, about free physicians, not on account of their hastiness and carelessness, but rather because of their boastful and haughty bearing; thus, for instance, Menecrates, a physician of Syracuse, was accused of always dressing in the most elaborate fashion, and wishing to be called Zeus. Others were rude or inconsiderate to their patients, like that doctor who answered a patient, when he expressed fear of death, with the words of Homer:--“Patroclus, too, is dead, and he was a better man than thou.” Others gave annoyance by carelessness in their dress and noisy manner, loud talk, etc. Hippocrates insisted that a physician should aim at a certain amount of elegance in dress and care in regard to his person,