In practice he believed in curing his patients with as little discomfort as possible, which doubtless helped to make him popular. He was averse to the employment of violent remedies and the excessive use of emetics and purgatives so much favoured by his fellow-practitioners.
He advocated the use of music as a soothing agent, and was strongly in favour of bathing frequently and of massage.
He strongly believed in wine as a remedial agent, which it has been said may have accounted for his popularity with the Roman ladies, with whom as a physician he was in great demand. He lived to a very advanced age, and died it is stated from the effects of a fall.
Galen, born at Pergamus in the year A.D. 131, studied in the school of Alexandria, which then had a considerable reputation, and there he formulated his system of treatment founded on his knowledge of anatomy and on observation. His fame having spread abroad, he travelled to Rome and became physician to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. According to Galen, the health of the body depended on an equal and uniform mixture of solids and liquids, and its sickness arose from their inequality; consequently, the physician should foresee illness. He was a profound student of anatomy in his early career, and afterwards turned his attention to physiology. His views as to inflammation, intermittent fevers, and his system of antipathies and sympathies, place him very much above his predecessors.
“In the beginning of the fifth century,” says Lacroix, “the practice of medicine, like that of surgery, which was not yet a distinct branch, continued to be free without any authorisation being required. There were even women who, like the Druidesses of the Gauls, treated the sick.” Charmers, unconscious, no doubt, of the occult forces which they set to work, attempted to cure neuralgic pains, country bone-setters to mend fractured limbs, while oculists and impostors of the worst kind travelled the country.
It was not until the close of the eighth century that a regular course of medical instruction was founded, the first of the kind being organised at Salerno, in the kingdom of Naples.
Alexander of Tralles, a noted physician, flourished in the middle of the sixth century. No Greek doctor equalled him since the days of Hippocrates in regard to his knowledge of his art in those primitive days. He is said to have possessed to a high degree the art of diagnosis, and he laid down as a principle, that no decision should be arrived at as to the treatment of a case until the specific causes of disease had been carefully considered. His depreciation of violent aperients, his views on melancholia and gout, and his generally common-sense treatment, stamped him as a man of superior attainments and ability. He was the first to resort to bleeding from the jugular vein, and to use iron in certain diseases affecting the blood.
It must not be imagined that the Roman practitioners of medicine were ill-paid, for it is recorded that Stertimus made some £6500 a year, and Canie, a surgeon, is said to have received £2000 for one operation, which contrasts well with fees of modern times. Votive offerings for health to the Roman deities were frequent, and sometimes consisted of land, animals, coin, jewellery, and other articles. Other bribes which have been discovered near ancient shrines are terra-cotta figures of deities, human beings, animals, and also portions of human anatomy, such as the liver or stomach. This superstition still exists, and is practised in many parts of Italy, the peasants making votive offerings similar to those of two thousand years ago.
The object of offering models of various portions of the body to special deities, was doubtless to propitiate the god to heal that special part in which the patient believed his complaint originated.