An hundred icy fingers chilled my brow:
I had no fever; now I’m nearly dead!”
(Dr. Handerson’s Trans.)
Anatomy had been pretty thoroughly taught in the Roman Empire. Rufus of Ephesus, who lived probably in the reign of Trajan, A.D. 98-117, was a very famous anatomist. He considered the spleen to be absolutely useless: a belief which lasted to quite modern times. The nerves we call recurrent were probably then only recently discovered. He proved that the nerves proceed from the brain, and divided them into those of sensation and those of motion. He considered the heart to be the seat of life, and remarked that the left ventricle is smaller and thicker than the right. He discovered the crossing (decussation) of the optic nerves, and made several important researches in the anatomy of the eye. He wrote on diseases of the mind, and discussed medicines in poetry.
Marinus, a celebrated physician and anatomist, lived in the first or second century of our era. He wrote many anatomical treatises, which Galen greatly praised, and he commented upon Hippocrates. He knew the seven cranial nerves, and discovered the inferior laryngeal nerve and the glands of the intestines.
Quintus, Galen’s tutor, was one of his pupils. Lycus was a pupil of Quintus, who wrote anatomical books of some reputation. Pelops was also one of Galen’s earliest tutors, and was a famous anatomist and physician at Smyrna. Æschryon, a native of Pergamos was another of Galen’s tutors, and had a great knowledge of pharmacy and materia medica. He was the father of all those who invent superstitious remedies for the bite of a mad dog by means of cruelty. For this he directs crawfish to be caught at a time when the sun and moon were in a particular position, and to be baked alive. A worthy combination, it will be perceived, of superstition, astrology, and purposeless cruelty.
Although anybody might practise medicine in Rome without let or hindrance, the Lex Cornelia ordered the arrest of the doctor if the patient died through his negligence (88 B.C.).
There was a public sanitary service and other Government employments which demanded properly instructed doctors in ancient Rome, and the practice of specialism in the treatment of disease was carried to even greater lengths than at present. Martial satirises this.[446]
In the time of Strabo and in that of Trajan there were public medical officers in Gaul, Asia Minor, and in Latium. In Rome there were district medical officers for every part of the city. They were permitted to engage in private practice, but were compelled to attend the poor gratuitously. Their salary, according to Puschmann,[447] was paid chiefly in articles of natural produce.
The archiatri populares were the district physicians. The court physicians were called archiatri palatini. The archiatri municipales were municipal physicians. Their guild was the Collegium Archiatrorum, which in constitution was not unlike our Royal College of Physicians.