Asclepiad

a kind of verse used by Horace and other writers. ‘Asclepiades, the descendants of the god of medicine, AXsculapius, by his sons Podalirius and Machaon, spread, together with the worship of the god, through Greece and Asia Minor. They formed an order of priests, which preserved the results of the medical experience acquired in the temples as an hereditary secret, and were thus, at the same time, physicians, prophets, and priests. ——— a Greek physician, born at Prusa, Bithynia, who flourished during the early part of the 1st century B.C. He is said to have been the first who distinguished between acute and chronic diseases, and the invention of laryngotomy is also ascribed to him; but his knowledge of anatomy was apparently very slight.