Note (1) — BOOK I.

1. Their gods. Though Æsculapius lived so near to the time of the Trojan war, yet the Greeks knew very little about him. The superstition of those times gave him a place among the gods: and as he was adored under the character of the genius of physick, it came at last to be doubted whether he was ever a mortal. This blind devotion, however, produced one happy consequence: his priests were obliged, for their own interest, to make themselves masters of all the physic that was known in that country, that they might be qualified to give advice to the people, who applied to them. Their prescriptions passed for the suggestions of the god; their cures for miraculous. But both diseases and remedies were carefully recorded.——Strabo tells us, that from these registers in the temple of Æsculapius at Cos, Hippocrates formed his plan for a proper diet.——Strabon. Geograph. lib. 14. p. 657. Edit. Casaub.