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Alexander of Tralles

A physician born at Tralles in Asia Minor, in the sixth century, very learned, and with a leaning towards medico-magical practice. He prescribed for his patients amulets and charmed words, as, for instance, when he says in his Practice of Medicine that the figure of Hercules strangling the Nemean lion, graven on a stone and set in a ring, was an excellent cure for colic. He also claimed that charms and philacteries were efficacious remedies for gout, fevers, etc.