CHAP. 7. (3.)—THE NEW SYSTEM OF MEDICINE: ASCLEPIADES THE PHYSICIAN.
Still, however, the ancient theories remained unshaken, based as they were upon the still existing grounds of universally acknowledged experience; until, in the time of Pompeius Magnus, Asclepiades,1032 a professor of rhetoric, who considered himself not sufficiently repaid by that pursuit, and whose readiness and sagacity rendered him better adapted for any other than forensic practice, suddenly turned his attention to the medical art. Having never practised medicine, and being totally unacquainted with the nature of remedies—a knowledge only to be acquired by personal examination and actual experience—as a matter of course, he was obliged to renounce all previously-established theories, and to trust rather to his flowing periods and his well-studied discourses, for gaining an influence upon the minds of his audience.
Reducing the whole art of medicine to an estimation solely of primary causes, he made it nothing but a merely conjectural art, and established it as his creed, that there are five great principles of treatment for all diseases in common; diet, use or non-use of wine, frictions, exercise on foot, and exercise1033 in a carriage or on horseback. As every one perceived that each of these methods of treatment lay quite within his own reach, all, of course, with the greatest readiness gave their assent, willing as they were to believe that to be true which was so easy of acquisition; and hence it was that he attracted nearly all the world about him, as though he had been sent among mankind on a special mission from heaven.