Note 728 — Chapter XXXVII · IONIC PHILOSOPHERS. — PYTHAGORAS. — KROTON AND SYBARIS.
Reading edition
Herodot. iii, 131; Strabo, vi, p. 261: Menander de Encomiis, p. 96, ed. Heeren. Ἀθηναίους ἐπὶ ἀγαλματοποιΐα τε καὶ ζωγραφικῇ, καὶ Κροτωνιάτας ἐπὶ ἰατρικῇ, μέγα φρονῆσαι, etc.
The Krotoniate Alkmæon, a younger contemporary of Pythagoras (Aristotel. Metaph. i, 5), is among the earliest names mentioned as philosophizing upon physical and medical subjects. See Brandis, Handbuch der Geschicht. der Philos. sect. lxxxiii, p. 508, and Aristotel. De Generat. Animal. iii, 2, p. 752, Bekker.
The medical art in Egypt, at the time when Pythagoras visited that country, was sufficiently far advanced to excite the attention of an inquisitive traveller,—the branches of it minutely subdivided and strict rules laid down for practice (Herodot. ii, 84; Aristotel. Politic, iii, 10, 4).