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Osler, William, 1849-1919

"A Series of Lectures Delivered at Yale University on the Silliman Foundation in April, 1913"


(32) Allbutt: British Medical Journal, London, 1909, ii, 1449;
1515; 1598.
(33) Fischer, Jena, 1909.
And in the "Apollonius of Tyana" by Philostratus, when Apollonius
wishes to prove an alibi, he calls to witness the physicians of his sick
friend, Seleucus and Straloctes, who were accompanied by their clinical
class to the number of about thirty students.(34) But for a first-hand
sketch of the condition of the profession we must go to Pliny, whose
account in the twenty-ninth book of the "Natural History" is one of the
most interesting and amusing chapters in that delightful work. He quotes
Cato's tirade against Greek physicians,--corrupters of the race, whom he
would have banished from the city,--then he sketches the career of some
of the more famous of the physicians under the Empire, some of whom must
have had incomes never approached at any other period in the history of
medicine. The chapter gives a good picture of the stage on which Galen
(practically a contemporary of Pliny) was to play so important a role.
Pliny seems himself to have been rather disgusted with the devious paths
of the doctors of his day, and there is no one who has touched with
stronger language upon the weak points of the art of physic.


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