The healing methods of the priests of Aesculapius were especially distinguished from those of the professional physicians by the veil of secrecy and miracle which surrounded them, since they rightly understood that the love of wonders among the common people would always bring them success. The healing was effected by what was called "incubation"; the patient had to lie down at night in the sanctuary and sleep; in a dream the god appeared to him, and either suggested to him the remedy which would cure him, or else undertook, on the spot, to heal the sleeper, so that the patient, when he awoke, found himself restored to health, and went joyfully away! Aristophanes, in his "Plutus," drastically depicts one of these cures in the temple. The blind god of riches comes to the temple of Aesculapius to seek for healing; after taking a bath in the sea, he is conducted to the sanctuary; he offers a sacrifice and then lies down to sleep, together with other patients, and one of the temple servants warns them to keep unbroken silence. The servant who accompanies Plutus, and who relates the proceedings, seems to be a somewhat free-thinking rogue. He cannot sleep, and as he observes that after the invalids have gone to sleep, the priests take away and pocket the offerings laid upon the altars, he also takes the opportunity to filch a pot of porridge from an old woman near him. After a time the god himself appears, accompanied by two goddesses of healing. He goes round, examines the individual patients, and, at last, comes also to Plutus; he feels his head, dries his eyelids with a linen cloth, and one of the goddesses puts a purple veil over his face. Suddenly two great snakes come from the interior of the temple, creep under the veil, and lick the eyelids of Plutus, who thus recovers the power of sight. Here the cure takes place during sleep, as also in the stories which are related on the inscriptions of Epidaurus, mentioned above. There, too, an account is given of the cure of a blind woman to whom Aesculapius appears in a dream, and restores her sight by dropping some healing lotion into her eyes, in return for the promise that she will dedicate a silver pig to Aesculapius (to whom pigs were often sacrificed), as a penalty for having come to the temple in a state of unbelief. Such cures of blindness are often mentioned in the inscriptions; sometimes the dog, which was also sacred to Aesculapius, takes the place of the god, as the snakes did in Aristophanes, and cures the eyes by licking them; in another case the snake of Aesculapius cures the wounded toes of a patient by licking. Many cases are even more wonderful. A man, who has completely lost one of his eyes, receives the lost eye again by means of healing lotion poured into his sockets by the god during sleep. A woman, who has a worm in her body, dreams that Aesculapius cuts it open for her, takes the worm out, and sews it up again. A man has moles on his forehead, which the god removes by laying a bandage over his brow, whereupon next moment it appears perfectly white and pure, while the moles are left on the bandage; another man has lost the use of the fingers of one hand, the god jumps on his hand and pulls his fingers straight again, whereupon he is once more able to use them, etc., etc. Indeed, Aesculapius not only cures sick people, but also lifeless objects. A slave has broken his master's cup, and as he sits sadly looking at it, a passer-by laughingly says that even Aesculapius could not mend that. That suggests to him taking the fragments into the temple, and next morning, when he opens the case in which he has put them, behold, the cup is whole again!