temple extinguished all the lights in the sick men's chamber; thus
involving them in a solemn stillness and obscurity highly favourable to
the work in hand, but in a particular manner to the subterfuge of the
priests, who enacted the nocturnal apparition of Aesculapius to his sick
client.

This passage in Plutus is certainly the earliest circumstantial
relation we possess of the practice of this species of incubation.[106]
The license permitted to Grecian comedy was such as to authorise the
ridicule and contempt of the most popular deities; we are not, therefore
to conclude from the scenes that there were many unbelievers, or that
this ancient system of cure had sunk into disrepute: for the history of
our comedian's great contemporary, Hippocrates, informs us, that at this
very time the temple of Aesculapius at Cos abounded in tablets, on which
the sick attested the remedies that had been revealed to them during
incubation, and that he himself was highly indebted to them for much of
his medical knowledge.

Were it not authenticated by the most undeniable testimonies, it would
appear incredible that the impostures of the disciples of Aesculapius,
and the common faith in his regenerative powers, should have survived
with equal potency and acceptation during the ages immediately
succeeding the Christian era. It must not however, be forgotten, that
these were the times also, when an infinity of superstitious of every
description disgraced the Roman world; although it would have appeared a
necessary consequence, that their prevalency should have been checked by
the increasing determination of learning and science.

If at this period the number of dreaming patients had fallen off at Cos
and Epidaurus, the deficiency was amply compensated by the growing
popularity of Aesculapius's shrines at Rome, Pergamus, Alaea, Mallos,
and other places, where the ancient rituals were faithfully preserved.
The highest magistrates in the Roman states not only countenanced, but
patronised the superstition; Marcus Aurelius, by the friendship with
which he honoured the Paphlagonian imposter Alexander, and Caracalla, by
the journey he undertook to Pergamus, to obtain the cure of a disease
which inflicted him. This Alexander, the Cagliostro of his age, whose
memoirs have been handed down to us by Lucian, made shift to father a
new species of juggling upon the ancient process of incubation: for he
pretends that it was necessary for him to sleep