BOOK 1. 5

Ed. Chart. X. [5.] Ed. Bas. IV. (35.)

...remained among the Asclepiads The Asclepiads were a guild or family of physicians who claimed descent from Asclepius, the god of healing. Traditionally, medical knowledge was passed down from father to son within these lineages. in Asia. This was because the branch of the family that lived in Rhodes had died out. These men engaged in that "good strife" which the poet Hesiod Hesiod was an 8th-century BCE Greek poet. In his work "Works and Days," he describes two types of "Strife" (Eris): one that causes war and another that encourages healthy competition and hard work. praised. The physicians from Italy also joined this competition, including Philistion, Empedocles, Pausanias, and their followers.

These groups formed three wonderful "choirs" original: "χοροὶ" (choroi). Galen uses this term to describe groups or schools of physicians working in harmony. of physicians who competed with one another. The school of Cos was the most fortunate, possessing the greatest number of excellent members. The school of Cnidus was close behind it. The school from Italy also held a position of no small value.

None of these men, however, used to visit the doors of the wealthy in the morning to pay them compliments. Nor did they seek to attend their dinner parties in the evening. Instead, they acted as Hesiod described:

For one man, seeing another who is rich, hastens
To plow and to plant, being eager for work.

In the same way, those ancient physicians were constantly in competition with one another. They did not compete over plowing or planting the earth. Such tasks were lesser things for the race of the Asclepiads, though they were fitting enough for the poet from Ascra Hesiod is often called the "Ascraean" because he was born in the village of Ascra. Galen suggests that while farming is noble for a poet-farmer like Hesiod, the physician's work is even more refined.. Instead, they sought to practice, to expand, and to bring to perfection the art of Apollo and Asclepius.