the copper mines of Cyprus he collected medicinal ores, Balm of Gilead at Palestine, asphalt from the Dead Sea, and many drugs in Phoenicia. At last he stood once more in the fertile valley of Pergamus; he remained there about a year. But the Greeks and Romans had a habit of recalling their famous sons almost as soon as they were out of sight. Half the illustrious men of Athens and Rome were exiled and invited to return. The emperor Marcus Aurelius summoned Galen to his side. Marcus Aurelius was at Aquileia, preparing to wage war against the Marcomanni, tho he would much have preferred to be in his study, writing his Meditations. When Galen arrived in the camp, the flesh-fed plague was thinning the army, and the emperor and his soldiers fled back to Rome. On setting out a second time against the enemy, Marcus Aurelius desired Galen to be his companion, but the physician informed his ruler that in a dream Esculapius had warned him to remain at Rome and attend the emperor's children. And sure enough, little Commodus soon became sick, and Galen performed the doubtful service of saving a creature that became one of the most infamous of the hideous Roman emperors. But Faustina, the mother of the monster, was pleased, and she thanked Galen heartily, and crooned into the ear of her child that one day he would wear the purple.

Upon the decease of Demetrius, Galen was appointed court physician, but he had considerable time for scientific work, as his chief duty consisted in preparing for Marcus Aurelius a costly treacle, a supposed antidote against all poisons. In the days of imperial Rome such precautions were not superfluous, but what the mixture really contained we cannot say, as its principal constituents were immersed in a flood of polypharmacy.

In 175 Marcus Aurelius succeeded in subduing the fierce Marcomanni, and returned to the capital. Of course a triumphant emperor must be feasted, and the Romans were champion gluttons with extraordinary alimentary canals, but the scholarly Aurelius was really a transplanted Greek whose or

dinary stomach gave way under the endless courses. Poor Marcus needed all his stoic philosophy to keep him from groaning, and he sent for several physicians. A physician's function is to administer medicines, and they did so, but their drugs did not avail. Galen was sent for, but we must allow him to relate the incident in his characteristic style:

'Hereupon I was summoned also to spend the night in the palace, a messenger coming to fetch me, by order of the emperor, just as the lamps were being lighted. Three physicians had seen him in the morning and at the eighth hour, and two had felt his pulse, whilst to all did it appear the beginning of an attack. I, however, remained silent; then the emperor, perceiving me, asked why I had not, like the others, felt his pulse. I replied: Two have already done this, and from their experience upon the journey with thee are better able to judge of its present condition. As I said this he called on me to feel him, and as the pulse, taking into consideration the age and constitution of the patient, seemed to me inconsistent with an attack of fever, I declared that none was to be feared, but that the stomach was overloaded with nourishment which had been coated with phlegm. This diagnosis called forth his praise and he thrice repeated: Yes, that is it, it is exactly as thou sayest; I feel that cold food is disagreeing with me. He then asked me what was to be done. I answered him frankly that if another than he had been the patient, I should, following my custom, have given him wine with pepper. With sovereigns like thyself, however, I said, physicians are in the habit of employing the least drastic remedies, therefore it must suffice to apply wool saturated with warm spikenard upon the abdomen. The emperor replied that warm ointment on purple wool was his usual remedy for pain in the stomach, and called Peitholaus to apply it while he bade me depart. No sooner had I gone than he demanded Sabine wine, threw pepper into it and drank, after which he said to Peitholaus that now at last he had a physician and a courageous one, repeating that he had tried many but that I was the first