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46 FIRST PERIOD—ANTIQUITY

The temples ot ^sculapius became so numerous in time that they
were to be found in ahiiost every Greek city. The most celebrated were
those of Epidaurus, Cos, Cnydus, and Rhodes, as well as that of the great
city of Agrigentum, in Sicily. The Asklepiadi not only performed the
temple rites, but were doctors at the same time, for as interpreters of the
wisdom ot the god, they also occupied themselves in curing the sick.
From this it resulted that these temples became in time, through observa-
tion and experience, schools of medical science.
But besides this sacerdotal medicine, there was also a lay medicine in
Greece. Many great philosophers, especially Pythagoras, Alcmeon of
Croton, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Democritus, occupied themselves
with physiology, with hygiene, and with medicine; also the gymnasiarchs,
or directors of gymnasiums, or schools of gymnastics, an art having
for its end to increase physical strength and maintain health, cultivated
medicine, particularly that part of it which concerns hygiene, dietetics,
and surgery as applied to the treatment of violent lesions, such as fractures,
luxations, etc.
The Asklepiadi often themselves imparted the principles of medicine
to students outside their caste. Lay medicine thus gradually came to
supplant sacerdotal medicine, especially after Hippocrates, who through
his works, exercised a preponderant influence in the secularization of
the science. However, the Asklepiadi, on their side, continued to practise
medicine up to the time when the pagan temples fell into complete ruin,
through the advance of Christianity.
On the columns of the asklepeia and on the votive tables were written
the names of those cured by the god, together with indications regarding
their various maladies and the treatment by virtue of which the sick had
been restored to health.
V Surgical instruments of proved utility were deposited in the temples.
Celius Aurelianus makes mention of a leaden instrument used for the
extraction of teeth (^plumbeum odontagogon\ which was exhibited in the
temple of Apollo, at Delphi.
As a matter of fact, it would seem more natural that this instrument
should have been shown in the temple of y^^sculapius, he^ being the god
of Medicine, and believed, besides, to be the inventor of dental extraction.
One is rather inclined by this to think that the oJoutagogon may have
been deposited m the temple of Apollo before the building of ^sculapian
temples. Indeed, who can tell if y^^sculapius himself, not vet deified,
may not have deposited there a model of the instrument he had invented!
From the fact of the odontagogon in the temple of Apollo being made
of lead, Erasistratus, Celius Aurelianus, and other ancient writers have
drawn the deduction that it was only permissible to extract teeth when
they were loose enough to be taken out with a leaden instrument. But