directors regulated the diet of the youth, the _gymnastae_ prescribed
for their diseases, and the inferiors dressed wounds and fractures. Not
only was the general idea entertained that bodily exercise is good for
the health, but different kinds of exertion were selected as adapted to
particular maladies. Upright wrestling was thought most beneficial to
the upper portion of the body, and the cure of dropsy was believed to be
peculiarly promoted by gymnastic sports. Hippocrates had some faith in
the "motor cure." In some cases he advises common wrestling; in others,
wrestling with the hands only. The practice with the _corycus_, or
hanging-bag of sand, and a regular motion of the upper limbs, resembling
the manual exercise of the soldier, were also esteemed by him. Galen
inveighs against the more violent exercises, but recommends moderate
ones as part of the physician's art. Asclepiades, in the time of Pompey
the Great, called exercises the common aids of physic, and got great
glory--and money, it is to be hoped--by various mechanical contrivances
for the sick.

The ancients probably esteemed gymnastics too much, as the moderns do
too little, for medical or sanative purposes. The Greeks, with a very
limited knowledge of physiology and pathology, would be more apt to
treat symptoms than to trace the causes of disease; and no doubt they
sometimes prescribed exercises which were injudicious or positively
injurious. We still trust too much, perhaps, to medication, and do not
keep in view the great helps which Nature spreads around us. Truth lies
between the two extremes; and we are beginning to recognize the fact,
which experience daily teaches us, that light, air, and motion are more
potent than drugs,--and that iron will not redden the cheeks, nor bark
restring the nerves, so safely and so surely as moderate daily exercise
out of doors.