It seems to me to be a question well worth investigating, why on earth Erasistratus, who was, after all, so competent in the other branches of the Art, and so meticulous about the minutest detail as to describe even the boiling of certain vegetables and of plasters – matters on which it would have sufficed any one else just to say what was essential and to omit the mode of preparation, as a minor point which anyone could pick up as he went along – why Erasistratus, in the case of such a powerful and important remedy as phlebotomy, and one that was esteemed by the ancients as in no way inferior to the most effective of all, has nothing to say. The fact is that the word K148 phlebotomy is scarcely to be found in any work of his; the one exception is in his book on bringing up blood, but even here he mentions it more, it would seem, in passing than as something he was considering with the care it deserves.