of his works.  Called to see a lady he found her suffering from general malaise without any fever or increased action of the pulse.  He saw at once that her trouble was mental and, like a wise physician, engaged her in general conversation.  Quite possibly he knew her story, for the name of a certain actor, Pylades, was mentioned, and he noticed that her pulse at once increased in rapidity and became irregular.  On the next day he arranged that the name of another actor, Morphus, should be mentioned, and on the third day the experiment was repeated but without effect.  Then on the fourth evening it was again mentioned that Pylades was dancing, and the pulse quickened and became irregular, so he concluded that she was in love with Pylades.  He tells how he was first called to treat the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who had a stomach-ache after eating too much cheese.  He treated the case so successfully that the Emperor remarked, “I have but one physician, and he is a gentleman.”  He seems to have had good fees, as he received 400 aurei (about 2000) for a fortnight’s attendance upon the wife of Boethus.

He left Rome for a time in 168 A. D. and returned to Pergamon, but was recalled to Rome by the Emperor, whom he accompanied on an expedition to Germany.  There are records in his writings of many journeys, and busy with his practice in dissections and experiments he passed a long and energetic life, dying, according to most authorities, in the year 200 A.D.

A sketch of the state of medicine in Rome is given by Celsus in the first of his eight books, and he mentions the names of many of the leading practitioners, particularly Asclepiades, the Bithynian, a man of great ability, and a follower of the Alexandrians, who regarded all disease as due to a disturbed movement of the atoms.  Diet, exercise, massage and bathing were his great remedies, and his motto—­tuto, cito et jucunde—­has been the emulation of all physicians.  How important a role he and his successors played until the time of Galen may be gathered from the learned lectures of Sir Clifford Allbutt(32) on “Greek Medicine in Rome” and from Meyer-Steineg’s “Theodorus Priscianus und die romische Medizin."(33) From certain lay writers we learn that it was the custom for popular physicians to be followed on their rounds by crowds of students.  Martial’s epigram (V, ix) is often referred to: 

     Languebam:  sed tu comitatus protinus ad me
     Venisti centum, Symmache, discipulis. 
     Centum me tegigere manus Aquilone gelatae
     Non habui febrem, Symmache, nunc habeo.

     (32) Allbutt:  British Medical Journal, London, 1909, ii, 1449;
     1515; 1598.

     (33) Fischer, Jena, 1909.