GREEK THEORIES OF DISEASE. As the Greeks believed that all diseases were the consequences of the anger of the gods, it was in their temples that cures were most likely to take place. Faith was the _sine quâ non_ in the patient, and everything about the temple and its ceremonies was calculated to excite religious awe and to stimulate faith. Preliminary purifications, fasting, massage, and fomentations with herbs, were necessary parts of the initiatory ceremonies, and the imagination was excited by everything that the sufferer saw around him. He heard the stories of the marvellous cures which had taken place at the sacred fane. Tablets round the walls, placed there by grateful worshippers who had been cured in the past,[372] served to fill the mind with hope, when, as was the practice, the patient lay down in the holy place by the image of the healing god, that in the incubatory sleep the remedies which were to cure him might be revealed. Sometimes no such revelation was vouchsafed, then sacrifices and prayers were offered; if these failed, the priests themselves would appear in the mask and the dress of the healing god, and in the darkness and mystery of the night reveal the necessary prescriptions. To interpret the dreams was the task of the priests at all times, just as it was in the temples of ancient Egypt. Divination, magic, and astrology largely assisted in the work of discovering the requisite remedies. If all failed, it was due not to any defect on the part of the divinity or his servants, but simply to the want of faith on the part of the patient. The festivals of Æsculapius were called Asclepia, and the presiding priests of the healing god were named Asclepiades. The schools of the Asclepiades were a sort of medical guild, and their doctrines were divided into exoteric and esoteric. They naturally became possessed of a great body of medical teaching, which was preserved as a precious secret and handed down from generation to generation. The Asclepiadæ thus became the hereditary physicians of Greece. Medicine at this period was not a science to be taught to all comers, but was a mystery to be orally transmitted. These men pretended to be descendants of Æsculapius, just as now the imitators of medicines, perfumes, etc., which have become celebrated, give out that they belong to the family of the inventor, and thus know the secrets of the preparation.[373]