CHAP. 2.—PARTICULARS RELATIVE TO HIPPOCRATES. DATE OF THE
ORIGIN OF CLINICAL PRACTICE AND OF THAT OF IATRALIPTICS.
Its succeeding history, a fact that is truly marvellous, remains enveloped in the densest night, down to the time of
the Peloponnesian War; [Note] at which period it was restored to
light by the agency of Hippocrates, a native of Cos, an island
flourishing and powerful in the highest degree, and consecrated
to Æsculapius. It being the practice for persons who had recovered from a disease to describe in the temple of that god the
remedies to which they had owed their restoration to health,
that others might derive benefit therefrom in a similar emergency; Hippocrates, it is said, copied out these prescriptions,
and, as our fellow-countryman Varro will have it, after burning the temple to the ground, [Note] instituted that branch of medical practice which is known as "Clinics." [Note] There was no
limit after this to the profits derived from the practice of medicine; for Prodicus, [Note] a native of Selymbria, one of his disciples,
founded the branch of it known as "Iatraliptics," [Note] and so discovered a means of enriching the very anointers even and the
commonest drudges [Note] employed by the physicians.
