Various fragmentary notices exist regarding the physicians who attended upon those Roman Emperors who visited Britain. A medical author (whom Galen often quotes), Scribonius Largus, has left a valued therapeutical work, De Compositione Medicamentorum. This work was written, as we are informed in the preface to it, when the author was absent from Rome, and deprived of the greater part of his library. In his History of Medicine, Sprengel states, but I know not on what precise authority, that the work in question was composed by Largus when he was absent with the Emperor Claudius during his short campaign into England.[419] Our countryman, Sir Thomas Browne, makes a similar statement. In his Hydriotaphia, when discoursing on the want of Roman notices regarding the state, habits, etc., of the ancient Britons, he observes, “We much deplore the loss of that letter which Cicero expected or received from his brother Quintus, as a resolution of British customs; or the accounts which might have been made by Scribonius Largus, the physician accompanying the Emperor Claudius, who might have discovered that frugal bit of the old Britons (mentioned by Dion) which, in the bigness of a bean, could satisfy their hunger.”[420]
We have already had occasion to allude to the disasters which attended the Scottish campaign of Severus, and to the imperfect health of the emperor himself during his invasion of Scotland. The evidence of Herodian further shows us that during it he was attended by his own physicians, and that their conduct after the emperor’s return from Scotland to York, whilst in the highest degree commendable as regards their faith and duty to the emperor, proved the cause of their own downfall and destruction. The anxiety of Caracalla for the death of his father Severus is well known. We have the testimony of Herodian to the fact, that while the father and son were living at York, Caracalla at one time attempted to destroy his father with his own hand. The same historian further informs us, that the unhappy son attempted to induce the medical attendants of Severus to adopt means to hasten the emperor’s death.[421] He adds further, that in consequence of the court physicians not complying with his unrighteous request, Caracalla, immediately after the demise of Severus, commenced his reign of bloodshed and terror by putting to death these recusant physicians of the late emperor.[422]
In the retrospect, it affords a strange subject of meditation for us in the nineteenth century, to consider that, some fifteen hundred years ago, it thus happened in England, that a number of physicians were themselves doomed to death for refusing to pervert their professional trust so far as to become the murderers of the royal invalid who had confided his health to their care. And the modern physician may look back with some degree of pride upon the fact, that in an age and at a court where cruelty and corruption held unrestrained sway, some members of the medical profession at least remained so uncorruptible as to endanger and sacrifice their own lives rather than tamper with the life of their patient.[423]
ROMAN MEDICINE STAMPS.