Soon the Temple servitor
     Put out the lights and bade us fall asleep,
     Nor stir, nor speak, whatever noise we heard. 
     So down we lay in orderly repose. 
     And I could catch no slumber, not one wink,
     Struck by a nice tureen of broth which stood
     A little distance from an old wife’s head,
     Whereto I marvellously longed to creep. 
     Then, glancing upwards, I beheld the priest
     Whipping the cheese-cakes and figs from off
     The holy table; thence he coasted round
     To every altar spying what was left. 
     And everything he found he consecrated
     Into a sort of sack—­(16)

a procedure which reminds one of the story of “Bel and the Dragon.”  Then the god came, in the person of the priest, and scanned each patient.  He did not neglect physical measures, as he brayed in a mortar cloves, Tenian garlic, verjuice, squills and Sphettian vinegar, with which he made application to the eyes of the patient.

     (16) Aristophanes:  B. B. Roger’s translation, London, Bell
     & Sons, 1907, Vol.  VI, ll. 668, etc., 732 ff.

     Then the God clucked,
     And out there issued from the holy shrine
     Two great, enormous serpents.... 
     And underneath the scarlet cloth they crept,
     And licked his eyelids, as it seemed to me;
     And, mistress dear, before you could have drunk
     Of wine ten goblets, Wealth arose and saw.(17)

     (17) Ibid.

The incubation sleep, in which indications of cure were divinely sent, formed an important part of the ritual.

The Asklepieion, or Health Temple of Cos, recently excavated, is of special interest, as being at the birthplace of Hippocrates, who was himself an Asklepiad.  It is known that Cos was a great medical school.  The investigations of Professor Rudolf Hertzog have shown that this temple was very nearly the counterpart of the temple at Epidaurus.

The AEsculapian temples may have furnished a rare field for empirical enquiry.  As with our modern hospitals, the larger temple had rich libraries, full of valuable manuscripts and records of cases.  That there may have been secular Asklepiads connected with the temple, who were freed entirely from its superstitious practices and theurgic rites, is regarded as doubtful; yet is perhaps not so doubtful as one might think.  How often have we physicians to bow ourselves in the house of Rimmon!  It is very much the same today at Lourdes, where lay physicians have to look after scores of patients whose faith is too weak or whose maladies are too strong to be relieved by Our Lady of this famous shrine.  Even in the Christian era, there is evidence of the association of distinguished physicians with AEsculapian temples.  I notice that in one of his anatomical treatises, Galen speaks with affection of a citizen of Pergamos who has been a great benefactor of the AEsculapian temple of that city.  In “Marius, the Epicurean,” Pater gives a delightful sketch of one of those temple health resorts, and brings in Galen, stating that he had himself undergone the temple sleep; but to this I can find no reference in the general index of Galen’s works.