6E share of their former liberty. As their language was fashionable, their manners pleasing, their demeanour obliging, perhaps approaching to servility (Juvenal), it is not surprising that they should flock to Rome, nor that they should be favourably received.

Medicine obtained no inconsiderable advantages from the legacy of Attains P/iilometor, the last king of Per-gamus, who left the Romans his heir. We are told by Galen that the Pergameni were the rivals of the Egyptians in collecting books; and Philometor was peculiarly attached to gardening, and the examination of the powers of poisonous plants. It has been said that this study was rendered subservient to the most cruel purposes, but of Philometor's cruelty we have no evidence. We know that he wrote some tracts on agriculture, which Pliny and Varro have praised; that he engaged in metallurgic experiments, and in modelling with wax: Galen describes also, with commendation, some medicines invented by him. To the patronage and to the assistance, probably, of Philometor, we are indebted for the works of Nicander, particularly the Theriaca and Alexipharmica. His collection of remedies, the prognostics translated from Hippocrates, and a work in verse, De Re Rustica, highly commended by Cicero, are lost. A long fragment of the last is preserved by Athenaeus, which shows that it contained many observations relative to medicine. The poems which remain were highly valued by ancient authors, as we find from the numerous commentaries on them; and whatever may be said of Attalus' more philosophical or patriotic pursuits, it is still probable that experiments on condemned criminals furnished Nicander with many facts. The history of medicine describes Thrasyas as attentive to poisonous plants, and perhaps their antidotes, fable speaks of Deianira, Hecate, Circe, and Medea, but animal poisons were first considered scientifically by Nicander. The king of Pontus, about the same period, engaged in a similar investigation; and to his experiments in pursuit of antidotes we owe the famous medicine, which bears his name, Mithridate. The receipt, with many others, was taken from the cabinet of Mi-thridates, by Pompey, who directed his freed man Le-nseus to translate them. The original formula however of this famous alexipharmic consisted only of two dried nuts, as many figs, twenty leaves of rue, and a grain of salt. To this remedy we shall, however, return.

The pursuit of this subject has drawn us from our chronological clue; for, previous to the conquest of Pontus, Asclepiades flourished. He was not a Roman, but born in Prusia, a city of Bithynia. He was by profession a rhetorician, an Epicurean, and the friend of Cicero. If we may trust the report of Pliny, Ascle-piades came to Rome without any knowledge of medicine; and, failing in his attempts as a rhetorician, he with little preparation professed himself a physician. He was the first of this profession who gained general esteem in the capital of the world, and whose name has reached posterity. Pliny gives a long account of the artifices by which he attained his reputation, but they are such only as every fashionable physician employs, viz. pleasing the patient, and avoiding every thing that can give uneasiness, till nature cures, or yields to the disease. He curtailed the rigorous abstinence of the Greek physicians, gave wine occasionally, recommended friction, gestation, baths, etc. vide Balneum, professing to cure with speed, with safety, and without inconvenience. He declared that he deserved no credit, if he was himself unwell; and, fortunately for the credit of his system, he died in extreme old age, in consequence of a fall over the stairs.

Asclepiades was the founder of a new sect styled the Methodic; for his philosophy was that of Democritus as reformed by Epicurus, and his physiology rested on corpuscles, flowing through invisible pores. The doctrine of Hippocrates, respecting the intelligence of nature, and her influence in curing diseases, he rejected with contempt. He denied even the power of attraction in the magnet. The sou! he considered only as the united action of all the senses; and the intellect, or the power by which we understand what is secret or concealed, consisted, according to Asclepiades, in a resolution of the ideas, attained by the sensible images formerly collected. Every thing happened, in his opinion, from necessity, and nothing without a cause; nor was nature any thing but the body, or its motions, and, instead of assisting, usually injurious. Thus the Epicurean system of Asclepiades verged towards Stoicism. His anatomical knowledge was very imperfect, or he would not have thought that the urine passed from the intestines into the bladder through pores. Digestion was, in his opinion, unnecessary; and he supposed that the food was carried into the blood, and there attenuated till it was adapted to the pores of the vessels which conveyed it as nourishment. Hunger was induced by the relaxation of the larger, and thirst by that of the smaller pores. The faeces were not, he thought, excrementi-. tious, as some insects fed on them.

His pathology was of a similar complexion. Inflammation was owing to obstruction either from the magnitude, the figure, the multitude, or the rapid motion of the atoms; pain to obstruction from particles of a large size, and the absence of the smaller ones. Faintings, dropsies, and hectics, arose from the too great size of the pores; and dropsies, in particular, he thought might be owing to the transudation of the flesh, which then became water. Quotidians were owing, in his opinion, to the obstruction of the larger particles, tertians of the less, and quartans of the least. He denied the existence of critical days.

This system he adorned with all the art of his former profession, and his practice was no less captivating. He rejected vomits and purgatives; admitted of bleeding, but with numerous limitations; and substituted, for pur-gatives, the most acrid clysters. Obstructions were, he thought, best removed by wine, by friction, gestation, and bathing. He plumed himself on having first directed frictions, and is minute in his directions for their management; yet, so far as we can collect from his disciples, he added little to what Hippocrates had, in a few words, directed. He sometimes, however, ordered medicines, though chiefly external applications, and occasionally scarifications.