And to these two longer extracts may be added a third:—

From these considerations the inference is warranted that a physician cannot possibly give proper attention to a large number of patients. (Book III., Chapter IV.)

Celsus’ treatise was ignored by physicians for many centuries, but it was considered by the monks, in the Middle Ages, a valuable guide in the treatment of disease; and it was probably owing to this circumstance, says Védrènes, that the book did not altogether disappear. It was not until the year 1443 that Thomas de Sazanne, afterward Pope Nicholas V., discovered a copy of the work in the church of Saint Ambrosius, at Milan, but it was only in 1478 that the book was printed for the first time (at Florence). Then, as if to make up for the long neglect to which it had been subjected, no fewer than sixty Latin editions were issued during the two succeeding centuries; and, in addition, it was eventually translated into every modern European language.

Scribonius Largus, a Roman physician who lived during the reigns of Tiberius and Claudius (14–54 A. D.), owes his celebrity to the fact that he wrote and published (in 47 A. D.) a book containing a collection of the best medical formulae and popular recipes known at that time. He appears to have had a large private practice and to have spent a considerable portion of his professional life in the service of the army. He accompanied the Emperor Claudius, for example, in his campaign against Britain (43 A. D.), and the book which he wrote, and which has just been mentioned, was dedicated by him to that emperor. According to Neuburger, Scribonius is to be credited with having been the first to describe correctly the proper manner of obtaining the drug known as opium, and also the first to recommend, in the treatment of severe headaches, the employment of electric shocks as communicated by the fish called the “electric ray.”

Medical practice at that period, says Le Clerc, was divided among three kinds of practitioners—those who treated their cases exclusively by dietetic measures, those who effected cures by surgical means, and those who took charge only of such patients as required chiefly the employment of external remedies. But Scribonius Largus insists that such a division was more theoretical than real, as no one of these classes could get along without the cooperation of the others.

C. Plinius Secundus, commonly called Pliny the Elder, was born near the beginning of the first century of the Christian era, either at Verona or at Como in the north of Italy, and settled in Rome at an early period of his life. At the beginning of his career he served for some time in the army in Germany, and upon his return to Rome practiced as a pleader. Subsequently he held various official positions which gave him the opportunity of visiting other countries of Europe. He perished at Stabiae (near the modern Castellamare, on the Gulf of Naples) in 79 A. D., at the age of fifty-six years, while watching the eruption of Vesuvius, which overwhelmed Herculaneum and Pompeii. He was in command of the Roman fleet at the time.

Pliny was indefatigable as a writer and as a gatherer of knowledge of all sorts, and he and Celsus are well named the Encyclopaedists. He is said to have written twenty books on the war with the Germans, an unknown number on rhetoric and grammar, and thirty-seven on natural history. The latter books alone have come down to our time. Pliny’s nephew, who is known as Pliny the Younger, and who edited the great work of his uncle on natural history, furnishes us, in a letter addressed to the historian Tacitus, with some interesting details regarding the elder Pliny’s manner of life. It appears from this account, that the latter read almost incessantly. During his meals and while he was taking his bath, an attendant read aloud to him. He also took his books with him on his travels and was always accompanied by a person who could write rapidly under dictation. He continued this practice upon his return to Rome and dictated to his amanuensis even while he was being carried about in a sedan chair. Books 20–27 of his great work on natural history are devoted to the subject of remedial agents belonging to the vegetable kingdom, books 28–32 deal with those which belong to the animal kingdom, and books 33–37 treat of mineralogy with special reference to medicine, painting and sculpture. Pliny was a compiler and not an original investigator. Some idea of the popularity of his treatise on natural history may be gathered from the fact that it was the second book to be printed after the invention of printing, the Bible being the first. Another interesting fact connected with Pliny’s treatise is mentioned by Neuburger, viz., that the use of hyoscyamus and belladonna as agents capable of dilating the pupils, owed its origin to the discovery (by C. Himly, in 1800) of a place in the text (Book XXV., 92) where it is stated that the juice of the plant Anagallis was rubbed into the eyes before the operation for cataract was undertaken.

According to Pliny (Book XXXI., Chapter VI.), the ancients employed mineral waters extensively in the form of baths, and they also occasionally used them as internal remedies. Galen, too, mentions the fact that these waters were in demand in the spring or autumn for purgative purposes.

In Book XXXIX., 8, 3, Pliny—as quoted by Védrènes—makes the following remarks:—

Very few Romans have shown an active interest in medical affairs, and those few speedily found it necessary to pass themselves off as Greeks. For it is a well-known fact that those physicians who, without being able to speak Greek, attempted to build up a practice in Rome, failed to gain the confidence of their patients, even of those who were not at all familiar with that language.... When one’s health is the question at issue the readiness to place confidence in a medical adviser is apt to diminish in proportion as one’s knowledge of the man increases. Indeed, medicine is the only art in which one is quite ready at first to put faith in almost anybody who calls himself a physician, and that too, despite the acknowledged fact that in no other circumstances of life is an imposture more fraught with danger.