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The subject of gymnastic leads Plato to the sister subject of

medicine, which he further illustrates by the parallel of law.

The modern disbelief in medicine has led in this, as in some

other departments of knowledge, to a demand for greater

simplicity; physicians are becoming aware that they often make

diseases 'greater and more complicated' by their treatment of

them (Rep.). In two thousand years their art has made but slender

progress; what they have gained in the analysis of the parts is

in a great degree lost by their feebler conception of the human

frame as a whole. They have attended more to the cure of diseases

than to the conditions of health; and the improvements in

medicine have been more than counterbalanced by the disuse of

regular training.