Cato hated physicians, partly because they were mostly Greeks, and, partly because he was himself an outrageous quack, who thought himself equal to a whole college of physicians. Plutarch tells us[440] that he had heard of the answer which Hippocrates gave the king of Persia, when he sent for him and offered him a reward of many talents: “I will never make use of my art in favour of barbarians who are enemies of the Greeks.” He affected to believe that all Greek physicians took a similar oath, and therefore advised his son to have nothing to do with them. But there is no doubt his objection to the faculty arose from the fact that he had “himself written a little treatise in which he had set down his method of cure.” Cato’s guide to domestic medicine was good enough for the Roman people; what did they want with Greek physicians? His system of diet, according to Plutarch, was peculiar for sick persons; he did not approve of fasting, he permitted his patients to eat ducks, geese, pigeons, hares, etc., because they are a light diet suitable for sick people. Plutarch adds, that he was not in his own household a very successful practitioner, as he lost his wife and son. Pliny[441] tells us all about Cato’s book of recipes, which the Roman father of a family consulted when any of his family or domestic animals were ill. The family doctor of those days was the father or the master of the household, and no doubt Cato was a very generous, if not a very skilful practitioner. Seneca sums up the healing art of the time thus: “Medicina quondam paucarum fuit scientia herbarum quibus sisteretur fluens sanguis, vulnera coirent.”[442] Cato attempted to cure dislocations by magic songs (carmina): “Huat, hanat, ista, pista sista damniato damnaustra,” or nonsense simply. What his success in the treatment of luxations on this principle we are not informed. The practice of medicine and surgery before the time of Cæsar was not an honourable one in Rome. This may possibly have arisen from the fact that the only professors of the art were Greeks, who for the most part left their country for their country’s good and went to Rome merely to make money, honestly if possible—perhaps—but at all events to make it. Rome offered greater facilities for doing this than their native land, and the process was doubtless very similar to that with which our own colonies and the United States of America have in the past been only too familiar.[443]