His worship was introduced into Rome at the time of the Great Plague at the beginning of the third century B.C. (as told by Livy in Book XI), and the temple on the island of Tiber became a famous resort.  If you can transfer in imagination the Hot Springs of Virginia to the neighborhood of Washington, and put there a group of buildings such as are represented in these outlines of Caton’s(13) (p. 52), add a sumptuous theatre with seating capacity for 20,000, a stadium 600 feet long with a seating capacity of 12,000, and all possible accessories of art and science, you will have an idea of what the temple at Epidaurus, a few miles from Athens, was.  “The cult flourished mostly in places which, through climatic or hygienic advantages, were natural health resorts.  Those favoured spots on hill or mountain, in the shelter of forests, by rivers or springs of pure flowing water, were conducive to health.  The vivifying air, the well cultivated gardens surrounding the shrine, the magnificent view, all tended to cheer the heart with new hope of cure.  Many of these temples owed their fame to mineral or merely hot springs.  To the homely altars, erected originally by sacred fountains in the neighbourhood of health-giving mineral springs, were later added magnificent temples, pleasure-grounds for festivals, gymnasia in which bodily ailments were treated by physical exercises, baths and inunctions, also, as is proved by excavations, living rooms for the patients.  Access to the shrine was forbidden to the unclean and the impure, pregnant women and the mortally afflicted were kept away; no dead body could find a resting-place within the holy precincts, the shelter and the cure of the sick being undertaken by the keepers of inns and boarding-houses in the neighbourhood.  The suppliants for aid had to submit to careful purification, to bathe in sea, river or spring, to fast for a prescribed time, to abjure wine and certain articles of diet, and they were only permitted to enter the temple when they were adequately prepared by cleansing, inunction and fumigation.  This lengthy and exhausting preparation, partly dietetic, partly suggestive, was accompanied by a solemn service of prayer and sacrifice, whose symbolism tended highly to excite the imagination."(14)

     (13) Caton:  Temples and Ritual of Asklepios, 2d ed.,
     London, 1900.

     (14) Max Neuburger:  History of Medicine, English
     translation, Oxford, 1910, p. 94.

The temples were in charge of members of the guild or fraternity, the head of which was often, though not necessarily, a physician.  The Chief was appointed annually.  From Caton’s excellent sketch(15) you can get a good idea of the ritual, but still better is the delightful description given in the “Plutus” of Aristophanes.  After offering honey-cakes and baked meats on the altar, the suppliants arranged themselves on the pallets.

     (15) Caton:  Temples and Ritual of Asklepios, 2d ed.,
     London, 1900.