d spontaneous dislocation of the hip. He was a very famous man in
the Roman Republic, and was well acquainted with philosophy, especially
the philosophy of the Epicureans. Although he was almost entirely
ignorant of anatomy, he was far from being a quack. He had great powers
of observation and natural shrewdness, and his success largely
contributed to the establishment of Greek doctors and their methods in
Rome. There is grim humour in his description of the Hippocratic
treatise on therapeutics, which he called "a meditation on death." Pliny
relates that Asclepiades wagered that he would never die of disease, and
he won the wager, for he lived to old age and died of an accident!

_Themison, of Laodicea_, lived in the first century before Christ, and
was a pupil of Asclepiades of Prusa, the founder of the School of
Methodism. His views on atoms and pores led him to adopt a very simple
explanation of health and disease, for he considered that these pores
must be either constricted or dilated, and the aim of the physician
should be to dilate the constriction, and _vice versa_. This epitomized
system of medicine did away with the use of many classes of drugs, and,
from its simplicity, was quickly learned. A jeering opponent of the
system of the Methodici said that it could be taught in six months, and
Galen, in later years, ridiculed it, and called its practitioners "the
asses of Thessaly."

The great fault of Dogmatism was its absolute reliance on the wisdom of
Hippocrates, and Methodism was marred by its insufficiency and
sophistry.

In spite of his extravagant theories, Themison possessed skill in
practice. He was the first physician to describe rheumatism, and he also
is thought to have been the pioneer in the medicinal use of leeches. A
book on elephantiasis ascribed to him is not definitely known to be
authentic. It is worthy of note that he was anxious to write on
hydrophobia, but a case he had seen in early youth so impressed his mind
with horror that the mere thought of the disease caused him to suffer
some of the symptoms.

The views of the Methodists were less extreme than those of the
Dogmatists and Empirics. Celsus wrote of the Methodists: "They assert
that the knowledge of no cause whatever bears the least relation to the
method of cure; and that it is sufficient to observe some general
symptoms of distempers; and that there are three kinds of diseases, one
bound, another loose, and the third is a mixture