Note 35 — HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.

Aristides was the dupe and victim of the Asclepiades for ten successive years; he was alternately purged, vomited, and blistered; made to walk bare-footed, under a burning sun in summer, and in winter he was doomed to seek for the return of health, by bathing his feeble and emaciated body in the river. All this severity, he was made to believe, was exercised towards him by the express directions of Esculapius himself, with whom he was persuaded to fancy that he conversed in his dreams, and frequently beheld in nocturnal visions. Upon one occasion, the god, fatigued with the importunities of his votary, ordered him to lose 120 lbs. of blood; the unhappy man not having so much in his body, wisely took the liberty of interpreting the oracle in his own way, and parted with no more than he could conveniently spare.