till he fulfilled her vain imaginings.  “Sir, show our Persian folk your sceptre’s wings!  Enlarge my sire’s and brother’s large bequest.  This learned Greek shall guide your galleys west, and Dorian slave-girls grace our banquetings.”  So said she, taught of that o’er-artful man, the Italiote captive, Kroton’s Demokede, who recked not what of maladies began, nor who in Asia and in Greece might bleed, if he—­so writes the guileless Thurian—­ regained his home, and freedom of the Mede.

Plato has several references to these state physicians, who were evidently elected by a public assembly:  “When the assembly meets to elect a physician,” and the office was yearly, for in “The Statesman” we find the following:(7) “When the year of office has expired, the pilot, or physician has to come before a court of review” to answer any charges.  The physician must have been in practice for some time and attained eminence, before he was deemed worthy of the post of state physician.

     (7) Jowett:  Dialogues of Plato, 3d ed., Statesman, Vol.  IV,
     p. 502 (Stephanus, ii, 298 E)

“If you and I were physicians, and were advising one another that we were competent to practice as state-physicians, should I not ask about you, and would you not ask about me, Well, but how about Socrates himself, has he good health? and was anyone else ever known to be cured by him whether slave or freeman?"(7a)

     (7a) Jowett:  Dialogues of Plato, 3d ed., Gorgias, Vol.  II,
     p. 407 (Stephanus, I, 514 D).

All that is known of these state physicians has been collected by Pohl,(8) who has traced their evolution into Roman times.  That they were secular, independent of the AEsculapian temples, that they were well paid, that there was keen competition to get the most distinguished men, that they were paid by a special tax and that they were much esteemed—­are facts to be gleaned from Herodotus and from the inscriptions.  The lapidary records, extending over 1000 years, collected by Professor Oehler(8a) of Reina, throw an important light on the state of medicine in Greece and Rome.  Greek vases give representations of these state doctors at work.  Dr. E. Pottier has published one showing the treatment of a patient in the clinic.(8b)

     (8) R. Pohl:  De Graecorum medicis publicis, Berolini,
     Reimer, 1905; also Janus, Harlem, 1905, X, 491-494.

     (8a) J Oehler:  Janus, Harlem, 1909, XIV, 4; 111.

     (8b) E. Pottier:  Une clinique grecque au Ve siecle,
     Monuments et Memoires, XIII, p. 149.  Paris, 1906 (Fondation
     Eugene Piot).

That dissections were practiced by this group of nature philosophers is shown not only by the studies of Alcmaeon, but we have evidence that one of the latest of them, Diogenes of Apollonia, must have made elaborate dissections.  In the “Historia Animalium"(9) of Aristotle occurs his account of the blood vessels, which is by far the most elaborate met with in the literature until the writings of Galen.  It has, too, the great merit of accuracy (if we bear in mind the fact that it was not until after Aristotle that arteries and veins were differentiated), and indications are given as to the vessels from which blood may be drawn.