[2452] Apollo and Æsculapius, Agenor, Hercules, Chiron, and others.
[2453] The husband of Leda, and the father of Castor, Timandra, Clytæmnestra, and Philonoë. Hippolytus also was fabled to have been raised from the dead by Æsculapius.
[2454] Hippocrates is generally supposed to have been born B.C. 460.
[2455] In order to destroy the medical books and prescriptions there. The same story is told, with little variation, of Avicenna. Cnidos is also mentioned as the scene of this act of philosophical incendiarism.
[2456] “Clinice”—Chamber-physic, so called because the physician visited his patients ἐν κλίνῃ, “in bed.”
[2457] It is supposed by most commentators that Pliny commits a mistake here, and that in reality he is alluding to Herodicus of Selymbria in Thrace, who was the tutor, and not the disciple, of Hippocrates. Prodicus of Selymbria does not appear to be known.
[2458] “Healing by ointments,” or, as we should call it at the present day, “The Friction cure.”
[2459] “Mediastinis.”
[2460] Pythias, the daughter of Aristotle, was his stepmother, and adopted him. His mother’s name was Cretoxena.
[2461] Or “Sect of Experimentalists.” They based their practice upon experience derived from the observation of facts. The word “Empiric” is used only in a bad sense at the present day. For an account of Hippocrates, see end of B. vii.; of Chrysippus, see end of B. xx.; and of Erasistratus, see end of B. xi.