duties.”

Having established, then, the long and intimate nature of the Persian
intercourse with India, let us see how it bears on our more immediate
subject.

The works on medicine which are known to exist, and to have been written
in Persian, are not very many in number, but they cover a period of time
of nearly 400 years. The oldest of them is of the year 1392 A.D., and in
it and its successors there are long lists of Arabian authors whose
works had been consulted, and also various Indian works.

Greek physicians were in great request at the Persian court, and when
the daughter of the Emperor Aurelian was sent in marriage to the Persian
monarch, Sapor II., she had a number of Greek physicians in her train.
This king founded a new city called Jondisabour in honour of his Queen,
and owing to the settlement here of a number of Greek physicians, who
had, on account of religious differences, retired into Persia, this city
became celebrated as a medical school. Dr. Friend gives the names of
these as “Damascius the Syrian, Simplicius of Cilicia, Diogenes of
Phænicea, Isidorus of Gaza, and others, the most learned and greatest
philosophers of the age.” It is thought by some authors that many of the
Arabian writers who belonged to the college of Baghdad were educated at
Jondisabour.

The district of Jondisabour is even yet one of the most nourishing in
Persia, and contains mines which still yield turquoise, salt, lead,
copper, antimony, iron, and marble.

During the reign of the Persian king Nooshirwan, his physician Barzoueh