admirable descriptions of many of the diseases—for example, pleurisy with empyema, pneumonia, pulmonary consumption, cerebral apoplexy, paraplegia, tetanus, epilepsy, diabetes mellitus, gout, etc. From the character of these descriptions one is strongly tempted to believe that he must have made a certain number of postmortem examinations.
According to Neuburger, Aretaeus enters very fully into details when he discusses the subject of diagnosis; his statements in one place warranting the belief that he even auscultated the heart. His methods of treatment were based largely upon his own experience and were generally of a simple character. He attached great importance, for example, to a very careful regulation of the diet, muscular exercise, massage, etc., and his employment of remedies was confined to a very small number of such drugs as exert a mild action. When the case, however, was of such a character as to call for more vigorous interference, he did not hesitate to resort to the use of opium, emetics, cathartics, venesection, blistering, the red-hot cautery iron, etc.
Rufus, a native of Ephesus, a city of Asia Minor, about thirty-five miles from Smyrna, is reckoned by most authorities among the Eclectics; in other words, he was an independent, or one who adopted from the teachings of the different sects such doctrines as met with his approval, but who, at the same time, did not care to pose as the disciple of any one of them. He received his medical training at Alexandria, but it is not known where he practiced his profession. Almost no details concerning his life or his professional career have come down to our time. It is simply known that he flourished during the reign of the Emperor Trajan (98-117 A. D.). Ebn Ali, an Arabian physician and author, says that he was the leading medical authority of his time and that his works were highly esteemed by Galen. His treatise on anatomy (entitled "The Names of the Different Parts of the Human Body"), which is one of the few that have escaped destruction, is described as a treatise which was written for students, and
