very gentle forms of exercise the pores would become less clogged and would permit the juices of the body to flow more freely. In cases of dropsy, also, he was in the habit of employing friction for precisely the same purpose. He even used this remedy in cases of inflammation of the brain, in the expectation that he might thereby induce sleep for these patients. Indeed, this subject of frictions was one on which Asclepiades wrote at greater length than on any other remedial agent.
It is a surprising fact that, in common with Erasistratus, he taught the doctrine that physical exercise was not at all necessary to persons in normal health. At the same time he approved of it, when carefully graded, for those who were affected with bodily ills of a certain nature.
Wine was another remedy which Asclepiades was fond of prescribing in all sorts of maladies, but his rules in regard to the manner in which it should be employed were quite different from those adopted by his contemporaries. A few illustrations will suffice to show the different conditions for which he was wont to advocate the taking of wine: He gave it, for example,—though probably much diluted with water—to patients affected with fever, but only after the stage of greatest activity had been passed. Strange as it may appear to-day, he was rather in favor of giving to patients ill with inflammation of the brain (phrenitis) wine in sufficient quantity to produce intoxication; his belief being that he could in this way induce drowsiness and eventually sleep—a thing so desirable for those affected with that disease. Further, he instructed sufferers from catarrh to drink twice or three times as much wine as they usually drank, in consequence of which instructions the patients found it necessary to dilute their wine with water to a less degree than usual—that is, to such a degree that the proportion would be one-half of each; thus showing, as Le Clerc remarks, how sober the ancients must have been when they were in perfect health. They probably—he adds—drank their wine ordinarily in the proportion of five-sixths water to one-sixth wine, or, at most, three-quarters water to one-quarter wine.
