Fig. 2.
Representation of the ancient mode of performing succussion, as given by Vidus Vidius in the Venetian edition of Galen’s works (Cl. vi., p. 271).
[Face p. 204.
CHAPTER IV.
THE EARLIER ROMAN MEDICINE.
Disease-Goddesses.—School of the Methodists.—Rufus and Marinus.—Pliny.—Celsus.
How medical instruction was first given to the Romans cannot be ascertained with certainty; the want of it must have frequently been forced upon the attention of the authorities. It was the practice of the soldiers to dress each other’s wounds; they carried bandages with them for this purpose; but their surgery must have been very indifferent, for Livy tells us that, after the battle of Sutrium (B.C. 309), more soldiers were lost by dying of their wounds than were killed by the enemy.
As the Etruscans were famous for their knowledge of philosophy and medicine, the Romans probably acquired something of these sciences from this ancient people; but that they were more apt at learning their superstitions than their arts of healing, we have proof enough. Whether the Romans were more indebted to the Etruscans or to the Sabine people for their religion is a question which has been discussed. It would seem that Numa Pompilius, the legendary king of Rome, was of Sabine origin, and that he possessed some acquaintance with physical science and philosophy. He dissuaded the Romans from idolatry. Livy’s account of his experiments, in consequence of which he was struck by lightning, has been considered by some writers as evidence that he was acquainted with electricity.[433]
How intellectually inferior the ancient Romans were in comparison with the Greeks, may be learned from the fact that Pliny tells us that “The Roman people for more than 600 years were not, indeed, without medical art, but they were without physicians.” Such mental culture as the Romans possessed was imported from Greece, and until the Greeks instructed them in medicine they possessed nothing but a theurgic system of treating disease by prayers, charms, prescriptions from the Sibylline books, and the rude surgery and domestic medicine of the barbarians. Guilty of degrading superstitions unknown to the Greeks, the list of their gods and goddesses of disease reads like the accounts of the healing art from some savage nation. Fever and stench were worshipped as the goddesses Febris and Mephitis; Fessonia helped the weary, says St. Augustine,[434] and “sweet Cloacina” was invoked when the drains were out of order.[435]
The itch patients invoked the goddess Scabies and the plague-stricken the goddess Angeronia; women sought the aid of Fluonia and Uterina, and Ossipaga was goddess of the navel and bones of children. There were many goddesses of midwifery; Carna presided over the abdominal viscera, and sacrifices of beans and bacon were offered to her. St. Augustine pours his satire and contempt on the women’s goddesses in the eleventh chapter of the book from which we have quoted. The Romans were cosmopolitan in the way of divinities; Isis and Serapis were imported from Egypt, the Cabiri from the Phœnicians, and the worship of Æsculapius was commenced by the Romans, B.C. 294.[436]
Certain facts in the history of the Romans prove that there was a profession of medicine in Rome even in very early times. Plutarch, in his Life of Cato the Censor, speaks of a Roman ambassador who was sent to the king of Bithynia, and who had his skull trepanned. By the Lex Aquilia a doctor who neglected a slave after an operation was responsible if he died in consequence, and in the Twelve Tables of Numa mention is made of dental operations.