Whatever may have been the surgical skill of Machaon, we have proof that the art of dieting the wounded was not at all understood in the Homeric days. The wine and cheese was not the kind of refreshment which found favour in Plato’s time with the Greek physicians. Plato, in the _Republic_ (Book III.), deals with the question at some length. He says that the draught of Pramnian wine with barley meal and cheese was an inflammatory mixture, and a strange potion for a man in the state of Eurypylus. But he excuses the sons of Asclepius for their treatment, explaining that their method was not intended for coddling invalids, but for such as had not time to be ill, and that the healing art was revealed for the benefit of those whose constitutions were naturally sound, and that doctors used to expel their disorders by drugs and the use of the knife without interrupting their customary avocations, declining altogether to assist chronic invalids to protract a miserable existence by a studied regimen. Le Clerc says[338] that Plato is wrong in this explanation of the Homeric treatment, and that the true one is that in those days the dietary of the sick was not understood. Modern medicine will decline to accept either theory. The fact is, Homer’s physicians were right. Good old wine was the best thing possible to restore a man fainting from the loss of blood; as for the cheese it was grated fine, and therefore was a peculiarly nutritious food in a fairly digestible condition. The barley water at all times was at least irreproachable. Although there is little evidence in the Homeric poems of any medical treatment which passes the limits of surgery, this is by no means conclusive against the possession of the higher art by Podalirius. In an epic poem, as Le Clerc points out, the subject is altogether too exalted to admit of medical discourses on the treatment of colic and diarrhœa. Neither must we be surprised, that when the pestilence appeared in the camp of Agamemnon, Podalirius and Machaon did nothing to avert it. Such a disease was at that time considered beyond all human skill, and as the direct visitation of the gods. Homer clearly explains that the pestilence was due to their anger. Galen adduces evidence to prove that Æsculapius did really practise medicine, by music and by gymnastics, or exercises on foot and horseback. As Le Clerc says,[339] this may have been patriotic exaggeration on the part of Galen. To Podalirius is attributed the invention of the art of bleeding. As he returned from the Trojan war, he was driven by a tempest on the shores of Caria, where a shepherd, having learned that he was a physician, took him to the king, whose daughter was sick. He cured her by bleeding from both arms; the king gave her to him in marriage, with a rich grant of land. This is the oldest example which we have of bleeding.