Six Books on the Art of Gymnastics

...they realized that [medicine] was entirely incomplete and could in no way be perfect. And these men were the first: Herodicus of Selymbria and his disciple Hippocrates, who were seen to have added the preservative part of health—which is concerned almost exclusively with healthy bodies—to the curative medicine of diseases. They believed it to be no less a noble and skillful work to protect healthy men from diseases than to free those already afflicted by them. Hence medicine, which before had always been as if a virgin, was made pregnant by them, since previously it was only in charge of curing illnesses, but then was also appointed to the preservation of health.

Whether Hippocrates forged that entire part of medicine which pertains to both the healthy and to the regimen of diet from the small tablets or other votive offerings dedicated in the temple of Aesculapius The Greek god of healing; patients would sleep in his temples (a practice called "incubation") hoping for a miraculous cure or a dream-vision from the god.; or whether he only developed the "clinical" part concerned with treating diseases—as Varro, Strabo, and Pliny Book 19, chapter 1. seem to have believed—is not entirely clear to me. However, it was certainly the custom for those freed from disease to write in the temple of that God what had been of help to them. This practice endured from those early times until the age of the Emperor Antoninus, not only in Greece but also in Italy. This can be understood especially from a marble tablet found in Rome in the temple of Aesculapius on the Tiber Island, which is preserved to this day in the Maffei household, and in which the following is read in Greek:

In those days, an oracle gave a response to a certain blind man named Gaius, telling him to come to the sacred altar and kneel; then he should go from the right side to the left, and place five fingers upon the altar, and raise his hand and place it over his own eyes. And he saw correctly while the people were present and rejoicing that living virtues original: "ζῶσαι ἀρεταὶ" (zosai aretai); here meaning "manifest powers" or "living miracles." were performed under our Emperor Antoninus. That is:

IN those days, an oracle gave a response to a certain blind man named Gaius, that he should come to the sacred altar and bend his knees, then go from the right side to the left, and place five fingers upon the altar, and raise his hand, and place it over his own eyes: and he saw correctly with the people present and congratulating him that great miracles were being done under our Emperor Antoninus.

To Lucius, suffering from pleurisy original: "πλευριτικῷ" (pleuritiko); an inflammation of the lungs and chest cavity. and given up on by every man, the god gave an oracle to come and take ashes from the three-fold altar, and [mix them] with wine...