But for no small part of this reluctance on the part of patients the Physicians were themselves to blame. We have no wish in this place to enlarge upon the possibility of professional indiscretion in their case, though long ago the Hippocratic masters saw themselves constrained to guard their scholars against it.[281] Of far greater weight was the nature of the _treatment_, especially that applied to ulcers of all kinds, which was excellently adapted to fill sufferers with fear and trembling. Already _Hippocrates_[282] taught that ulcers with callous margins must be cauterized or else cut away with the knife. _Galen_[283] declares himself even more plainly in the same sense: “But if the margins of the ulcer merely are discoloured and callous, they must be removed right to where the healthy flesh begins. Supposing this condition to have extended more widely, then the question arises,—whether we ought to cut away all the diseased tissue, or prefer a more tedious method of cure. It is natural and necessary in this case to consult the inclination of the patient; for whereas some prefer to avoid the knife and submit to a more tedious treatment, others on the contrary are ready for anything, so long as they get cured.” The same procedure was adopted with ulcers of the genitals, especially gangrenous ulcers, as is proved at once by the passage already quoted on p. 176 of Vol. II above. The Asiatic, for whom the genital organs were an object of veneration, was no doubt horrified, as the Turk is to this day,[284] at the idea of any such operation on himself; while the licentious Roman, who must have dreaded its very probable result in the entire loss of the further use and enjoyment of the parts in question,[285] sought any other means for choice, preferred to have recourse to Priapus or even resorted to suicide, like the _Municeps_ of Pliny mentioned on p. 257, before he trusted himself to the physicians who ever since the Carnifex (Butcher) Archagathus had appeared at Rome, strove to rival one another in infatuation for cautery and amputation. In any case it was only the direst necessity[286] that drove the sufferer under such circumstances to the physician; while the latter had really and truly no reason for enquiring into the origin of the evil, as very often absolutely no alternative was left him but to grasp the knife or cauterizing iron. In this way medical procedure could not but have fallen into disrepute, while physicians were in most instances necessarily deprived of all opportunity of systematic observation.