Marcellus of Bordeaux, court physician of Theodosius I, and a writer upon medicine, throws some light upon the state of medicine in his day. He affirmed that pimples might be removed by wiping them the instant you saw a falling-star. He said that a tumor could be cured if one half of a root of vervain were tied about the sufferer’s neck and the other half suspended over a fire. His theory was that as the vervain dried up in the smoke of the fire, the tumor would by force of magic sympathy likewise dry up and disappear. Marcellus added for the benefit of unpaid physicians that so persistent would be the sympathetic bond established that if the root of the vervain were later thrown into water, its absorption of moisture would produce a return of the tumor.[218] Ammianus Marcellinus, who wrote at the close of the fourth century, and who has been regarded by his critics from Gibbon down as a historian of distinguished merit, gives us an idea of mental conditions in his time, and was himself not free from belief in magic. It is true that in declaiming against the degeneracy of the Roman aristocracy he ridicules their trust in astrology, saying that many of them deny the existence of higher powers in heaven, yet think it imprudent to appear in public or dine or take a bath without first having consulted an almanac as to Mercury’s whereabouts or the exact position of the moon in Cancer.[219] Yet he believed in omens, portents and auspices, as the following citations will indicate and as one might show by other passages. The first passage is one in which Ammianus speaks of Alexandria as formerly having been a great place of learning and as even in his degenerate days a considerable intellectual centre. According to him, it is a sufficient recommendation for any medical man if he say that he was educated at Alexandria.[220] There whatever lies hidden is laid bare by geometry; music is not utterly forgotten nor harmony neglected; among some men, though their number may not be great, the motion of the world and stars is still a matter of consideration; there are not a few of those skilled in numbers. This is not all. “Besides these things they cherish the science which reveals the decrees of fate.”[221] The Emperor Julian was continually inspecting entrails of victims and interpreting dreams and omens, and even proposed to reopen a prophetic fountain which Hadrian was said to have blocked up for fear that others, like himself, might win the imperial throne through obedience to its predictions.[222] The mention of such practices of Julian leads Ammianus in another passage to attempt a justification of divination as a science worthy of the study and respect of the most erudite and intelligent. He says: