OPHTHALMIC SURGEONS. 107 forms of eye-salve, which they stamped with their names, and nearly 200 seals used for this purpose have been found scattered throughout the empire. The frequent defective spelling of these seals is only one of the many proofs of the bad education of the class. Thus Galen, writing on diseases of the eye, says he thought it useless to treat the subject scientifically, for the oculists would not understand it. In cases of corneal abscess it was their custom to seize the patient's head and shake it till the abscess burst, a treatment which, according to Galen, was often successful. The satirists are peculiarly bitter in their attacks on this class of specialists. "Now you are a gladiator who once were an ophthalmist," writes Martial; "you did as a doctor what you do as a gladiator" (viii. 74). Another epigram is yet severer: "The blear-eyed Hylas would have paid you sixpence, O Quintus; one eye is gone, he will still pay threepence; make haste and take it, brief is your chance, when he is blind he will pay you nothing" (viii. 9). But we must not suppose that there were no good eye doctors. Demosthenes, of Marseilles, whose great work on ophthalmic surgery still existed in the middle ages, is always mentioned with respect; others held official positions in the Roman fleets and armies, and we are surprised by the curiously-sounding title, "Oculist to the British Navy". It has even been suggested that one who is, in a sense, the greatest of physicians, St. Luke the Evangelist, was a specialist of this class, and that he travelled with St. Paul for the purpose of looking after that affection of the eyes with which the great apostle is believed to have been afflicted. Among the surgical instruments found at Rheims (see p. 95) is an oculist's seal engraved on one side thus: Marcelli (ni) dial (epidium) ad aspr (itudines), and on the other: Marcelli (ni) dial (epidium) ad clar (itudinem), i.e., “The scale ointment of Marcellinus for roughnesses" (? trachoma), and "for clearing the sight". With it were some fragments of dried drugs, which yielded on analysis, organic matter 33 parts, lead oxide 23 parts, carbonate of lime 18, peroxide of iron 16, black oxide of copper 43, and silica 4 parts; other fragments gave a considerable percentage of zinc, and "cadmium," i.e., calamine, the native carbonate of that metal, is a common ingredient of the prescriptions for eye-salves which have come down to us. 66 The Romans used the title "medicus," as we that of doctor," with great liberality, and sometimes applied it to a class of persons whom the Greeks called "drug-sellers” (pharmacopolæ), who were the middlemen between the physicians and the herb-gatherers (rhizotomi). The ancient physician compounded his own prescriptions, though Pliny reproaches those of his day with being unable to do so, and having to buy them ready-made from the drug-seller; and we must remember that it was not till the Arabic period that the drug-seller developed into the apothecary, or middleman between the physician and his patient. But doubtless they often sold medicines to the public, as well as perfumes, poisons, love philtres, etc., and they certainly managed to earn a very bad reputation. We find them classed with actors, ballet girls, and other (at that time) disreputable persons. A demagogue is said to bear the same relation to a genuine politician as a drug-seller does to a doctor; and a writer seeking for a type of utter folly says it is as though a town passing over a good physician chose a drug-seller as its doctor. The chief charge against them is indicated by the fact that "medicamentarius," which in the days of Pliny meant "drug-seller," had, by the time of Theodosius, become the recognised word for “poisoner ”. On the other side, we may mention the last will and testament of a drug-seller in the small town of Larinum, who bequeathes 300 pots of drugs, and about £600 in money, to his son-in-law on condition that he shall always supply the poor with medicines gratis. "He must have been a Christian," say admiring commentators; but we may hope that even a pagan might rise to that height of post-mortem benevolence. OFFICIAL MEDICINE IN ROME. 109 NOTES. 1 Schläger, Historia litis de medicorum apud veteros Romanos degentium conditione, 1740. 2 De Officiis, i. 42. 3 vii. i. 38. Quintilian suggests the following case: A man, having three sons, a philosopher, an orator (i.e., lawyer and politician), and a physician, divides his property into four parts and leaves the extra share to the one most useful to the State. Which should have it? 4 Pliny, N.H., xxix. 5. There can be little doubt that the Q. Stertinius of Pliny is identical with the Xenophon of Tacitus and the C. Stertinius Xenophon of the inscriptions, C having been changed to Q by some copyist. 5 Diaulus, who was once a surgeon, Now assists an undertaker, Here at length he finds the office To which alone his skill is suited (Martial, i. 47). Two more of Martial's medical epigrams deserve quotation, one for the light it throws upon the clinical teaching of the period, the other for the excellence of the translation. : The former may be freely rendered thus: Languid I lay, and thou camest, O Symmachus, quickly to see me ; The hundred pawed me all over with hands congealed by the north wind. The following is from the Dublin University Magazine, vol. xlvii.:- The merriest guest at all our dinner party, He dreamt he saw Hermocrates the quack (vi. 53). 6 Orelli, Inscript. Lat., 114. On the general subject see Mommsen and Marquardt, Handbuch der Römischen Alterthümer, vii. 749, etc.; Dupouy, Médecine et Mœurs de L'ancienne Rome, Paris, 1891, and the various Dictionaries of Antiquity. XXII.-OFFICIAL MEDICINE IN ANCIENT ROME. WHEN the Emperor Claudius made a speech to the Senate requesting exemption from taxes for the Island of Cos, he of course introduced the name of Esculapius, and he told his hearers that his own medical attendant, Xenophon, was a direct descendant of that divine physician.1 If the emperor did not make this up for the occasion, Xenophon is the latest known member of the great family of the Asclepiadæ ; he is also, perhaps, the first of a new order, that of the Imperial Archiatri, but he seems to have gained, or at least retained this honour, by breaking the oath of his guild and assisting in the murder of his master. Physicians, alas! are too often found as abettors in the crimes of the early empire, but we must remember that many were still in the position of slaves, or, at best, freedmen. In the hands of an Agrippina or a Messalina the choice must often have been between virtue and life, and we need not greatly blame a pagan practitioner if he sometimes preferred the latter.2 Whatever else is known of Xenophon is to his credit. We have the inscriptions of the people of Cos praising him as their public benefactor; and relating his long service with the army, in which he gained the blunt spear and the gold crown, rewards for distinguished conduct in the field; and we may hope that that one terrible crime is the only blot on the otherwise honourable life of the last Asclepiad.3 In the principal epigraph Xenophon is entitled "archiatrus," or chief physician, to "the august divinities," a term probably meant to include Agrippina and Nero; and he was succeeded in that office by Andromachus, inventor of a famous theriae, or antidote. It used to be thought that the Archiatrate was a purely Roman institution, but the office, as well as the name, appears to be Greek, for the title is applied in inscriptions to the physicians of Eastern kings, such as Mithridates of Pontus. We may, perhaps, even trace its origin to Egypt, where the title, "chief physician," was very common, and was, as we have seen, applied to the most ancient known practitioner of medicine. But whatever be its antiquity, the name has survived, in an altered form, to our own day, for philologists tell us that the German "arzt" is derived, not from artifex but from archiater, which became corrupted to "ærsater". At Rome the office underwent a rapid and remarkable development, and diligent historians distinguish no less than five classes of archiatri. Of these, the first may be considered a natural product of the gradual conversion of the Republican "imperator" into an Oriental monarch. The sacred person of the emperor could only be tended by physicians themselves marked off from the common herd, and at the Court of Constantinople the "archiatri palatini,” or "sacri palatii," formed a distinct body, whose president had the title of count, and who themselves ranked among the "perfectissimi," and might sometimes supply even an imperial vicar or a proconsul of Africa.5 The following was the formula for investiture of a "count" of the archiatri under Theodoric. After a eulogy of the art of medicine, and a gentle rebuke of the jealousies and quarrellings of physicians, Theodoric (or rather his minister, Cassiodorus) proceeds: "We invest you henceforth with the countship of the archiatri, that among the masters of health (salutis magistros) you alone may be pre-eminent and that all who have disputes in medical matters may yield to your judgment. Become the arbiter of a noble art, and decide its conflicts which are commonly only settled by the event; by so putting an end to harmful quarrels you will, in a way, benefit the sick. It is no mean office to rule over the wise and prudent and to be reverenced by those who are themselves reverenced by others. May your visits bring health to the sick, strength to the weak, and sure hope to the despairing." Here the Prime Minister airs his medical knowledge by describing the wonderful diagnoses which the archiater will make by examining pulses, urines, etc. Then in his master's name he continues: "Dwell in our palace, enter with confidence into our chamber, privileges which others obtain only at a great cost, for they enjoy them merely as servants, tu rerum domino studio præstantis observa (?). You may chasten us with fasting, you may impose rules which counteract our tastes, you may prescribe for us things we abhor, in a word you may exercise over us |