t Samos, and began life as an athlete, but a lecture which
he heard on the subject of the immortality of the soul kindled
enthusiasm for philosophical study, the pursuit of which led him to
visit Egypt, Phoenicia, Chaldea, and perhaps also India. He was imbued
with Eastern mysticism, and held that the air is full of spiritual
beings who send dreams to men, and health or disease to mankind and to
the lower animals. He did not remain long in Greece, but travelled much,
and settled for a considerable time in Crotona, in the South of Italy,
where he taught pupils, their course of study extending over five or six
years. The Pythagorean Society founded by him did much good at first,
but its members ultimately became greedy of gain and dishonest, and the
Society in the lifetime of its founder was subjected to persecution and
dispersed by angry mobs. Pythagoras possessed a prodigious mind. He is
best known for his teaching in reference to the transmigration of
souls, but he was also a great mathematician and astronomer. He taught
that "number is the essence of everything," and his philosophy
recognized that the universe is governed by law. God he represented by
the figure 1, matter by the figure 2, and the universe by the
combination 12, all of which, though fanciful, was an improvement upon
mythology, and a recognition of system.

In the practice of medicine he promoted health mainly by diet and
gymnastics, advised music for depression of spirits, and had in use
various vegetable drugs. He introduced oxymel of squills from Egypt into
Greece, and was a strong believer in the medicinal properties of onions.
He viewed surgery with disfavour, and used only salves and poultices.
The Asclepiades treated patients in the temples, but the Pythagoreans
visited from house to house, and from city to city, and were known as
the ambulant or periodic physicians.

Herodotus gives an account of another eminent physician of Crotona,
_Democedes_ by name, who succeeded Pythagoras. At this time, it is
recorded that the various cities had public medical officers. Democedes
gained his freedom from slavery as a reward for curing the wife of
Darius of an abscess in the breast.

The dispersal of the Pythagoreans led to the settlement of many of them,
and of their imitators, in Rome and various parts of Italy. Although
Pythagoras was a philosopher, he belongs to the Mystic Period, while
Hippocrates is the great central figure of the Philosophic Period