ledge, but with a good deal of ability and assurance. He
said that medicine surpassed all other arts, and he surpassed all other
physicians. His father had been a weaver, and in his youth Thessalus
followed the same calling, and never had any medical training. This did
not prevent him, however, from acquiring a great reputation as a doctor,
and making a fortune from medical practice. At first, he associated
himself with the views of the Methodici, but afterwards amended them as
he thought fit, until he had convinced the public, and perhaps also
himself, that he was the founder of a new and true system of medicine.
He spoke in very disrespectful and violent terms of his predecessors,
and said that no man before him had done anything to advance the science
of medicine. Besides having an endowment of natural shrewdness and
ability, he was equipped with great powers of self-advertisement, and
could cajole the rich and influential. He was an adept in the art of
flattery. Galen often refers to him, and always with contempt. Thessalus
was able, so he said, to teach the medical art in six months, and he
surrounded himself with a retinue of artisans, weavers, cooks, butchers,
and so on, who were allowed to kill or cure his patients. Sprengel
states that, after the time of Thessalus, the doctors of Rome forbore to
take their pupils with them on professional visits.

He began a method of treatment for chronic and obstinate cases. The
first three days of the treatment were given up to the use of vegetable
drugs, emetics, and strict dietary. Then followed fasting, and finally a
course of tonics and restoratives. He is said to have used colchicum for
gout. The tomb of Thessalus on the Appian Way was to be seen in Pliny's
time. It bore the arrogant device "Conqueror of Physicians." The success
of Thessalus seems a proof of the cynical belief that the public take a
man's worth at his own estimate.

Pliny, the elder, lived from A.D. 23 to 79, dying during the eruption of
Vesuvius when Pompeii and Herculaneum were destroyed. He was not a
scientific man, but was a prodigious recorder of information on all
subjects. Much of this information is inaccurate, for he was not able
to discriminate between the true and the false, or to assign to facts
their relative value.

His great book on Natural History includes many subjects that cannot
properly be considered as belonging to Natural History. It consists of
thirty-six books and an index, and