that, for more than twenty years, Menocritus, the son of Metrodorus of Samos, has devoted himself with much zeal and self-sacrifice to the duties of his position as parish physician, living all this time in rather narrow circumstances and not asking any pay for his services, we, the citizens of Brycontium, have resolved to erect in his honor, in the temple of Neptune, a marble column bearing an inscription that shall set forth these facts, to crown him with a wreath of gold, and to announce publicly, at the Aesculapian games, this our decision." As apropos of this subject I may be permitted to quote the following words from Plato's "The Republic" (Book 1, Chap. 18): "Will you call the medicinal the mercenary art, if, in performing a cure, one earns a reward? No, said he."
The Founding of Alexandria.—Alexander the Great, after subduing the Persians and the cities of Phoenicia, marched into Egypt and founded (331 B. C.), at the mouth of the Nile, the city of Alexandria. In October of the same year he crossed the Euphrates and the Tigris and defeated, for the second time, the Persian hosts under Darius. Alexander was now the conqueror of Asia. During the following eight years he laid his plans most carefully for the consolidation of his great empire, the capital of which was to have been Babylon; but, while he was thus making provision for the welfare of his numerous subjects, who were of widely different tastes and aspirations, he succumbed (323 B. C.) to a severe attack of malarial fever, aggravated by an excessive indulgence in wine on the occasion of some festivity. In the meantime Alexandria was developing rapidly into a great centre of learning in all the departments of human knowledge. The Ptolemies, beginning with Ptolemy Soter, who reigned over Egypt from 323 to 285 B. C., contributed greatly to this result. For a period of about 250 years Alexandria remained the centre around which revolved all that was best in the domains of medicine, philosophy, geometry, mathematics, history, etc. Money was spent lavishly in collecting the writings of all those authors who had distinguished themselves in these different fields of learning, and no pains
