CLASSES OF PHYSICIANS. 66 77 ally attract numerous followers, and thus schools arose in various places-Croton, Cyrene, Rhodes, Cos and Cnidus, till all were superseded by Alexandria. Aristotle distinguishes three classes of physicians-ordinary practitioners, teachers of the art, and amateurs, which last were probably very numerous, for the cultured Greek prided himself upon taking all knowledge as his province. Having finished his education, the young doctor went on his travels, and settled down in any city which seemed to offer a favourable opening; nor was he ignorant of the plan of working up a practice by treating the poor gratis. In an inscription of the year 304 B.C. the Athenian Assembly decrees that Pheidias, son of Apollonius the Rhodian, is to be praised and crowned because, "to show his good-will to the city," he volunteered to act as public medical officer without pay. We should probably do no injustice to the worthy Pheidias by supposing that he may have some other object besides the one mentioned in making this generous offer. Some further attempted to advertise themselves by exaggerating the Hippocratic rule as to elegance of dress and suavity of manner, thereby incurring the ridicule of the satirists, and we hear of no less than four Athenian comedies called "The Doctor," though, unfortunately, little more than their titles have survived. The prosperous physician trained his slaves to act as assistants, and to treat patients of their own class, which they did, according to Plato, in a very rough and ready manner. But slaves might also doctor freemen, for Diogenes tells his master that he ought to obey him though a slave, since even freemen obey slaves when they are physicians or pilots, and a philosopher is better than either. These slaves sometimes purchased liberty by their earnings, and we have an inscription in which such an one agrees to continue as his former master's assistant for a period of five years, in return for his board, lodging and clothes.1 In the Protagoras Plato incidentally tells us how the phy sician began to examine his patient: "He looks at his face and the tips of his fingers, and then he says, 'Uncover your chest and back to me that I may have a better view"". According to Xenophon, diligent practitioners visited their patients morning and evening, and Galen says that, when at Rome, he went twice a day into the country to see a case of ophthalmia, from which historians have concluded that his practice must have been a very poor one. With regard to fees, classic writers, unfortunately, only give extraordinary cases, such as Pliny's story of the £24,000, which Ptolemy is supposed to have paid Erasistratus, or Cleombrotus, but scattered passages in the comic poets seem to indicate that the usual fee for advice and medicine varied from one to two drachmæ (nine to eighteenpence). Sometimes a patient remembered his physician in his will, as did the philosopher Lykon, who bids his heirs "satisfy " his two medical attendants, "who deserve it and more for their zeal and ability”.5 Hippocrates, as we have seen, urged his pupils not to be over-eager for gain, but this warning was naturally often disregarded, and we hear of physicians who never opened their mouths without requiring to be paid for it, and whose first dealing with their patients was always to arrange about the fee. The beautiful Aspasia, of Phocæa, when a girl was horrified by the appearance of a tumour under her chin. A physician was sent for, but, though the girl's parents were poor, he refused to undertake the case till he was paid three staters (about forty-five shillings) on account. Next in importance to the physician is his office, the Iatreion, which was at once surgery, dispensary, and consulting-room, and which in later times became, like the gymnasia and barbers' shops, a favourite lounging place for idlers. Here the physician gave advice, performed operations, compounded medicines, and sometimes even received resident patients. Every large city also had its public Iatreion, which, as we learn from an inscription found at Delphi,7 was in some cases supported by a special tax. We have no evidence as to whether these institutions received in-patients, WOMEN IN MEDICINE. 79 but it would certainly have required very little to convert the free dispensary into a rate-supported hospital. Some writers consider that a still closer approach to this was made by a building near Athens called the Pæonium; but our only information about it, a fragment of a comedy preserved by Athenæus, hardly bears out this idea. Two Athenian dandies are discussing what they should do if there were no such conveniences as slaves. "I (says one) will rig up a mechanical arrangement like they have at the Pæonium, down on the sea-shore; hot water brought on arches will run straight into the bath, and stop when you tell it to; scent box, sponge and sandals will come in of their own accord." From this we may perhaps conclude that the place was a well-appointed hydropathic establishment where an exhausted Athenian "masher" could recruit himself with a bath, probably on paying a reasonable number of obols. Women, as in Homeric times, had a share in medical practice. The mother of Socrates was "a midwife brave and burly," and a sister of the sceptic philosopher Pyrrho belonged to the same profession, which, as Plato tells us, was confined to elderly and experienced matrons. They probably practised widely among their own sex, for in the "Hippolytus" the nurse tells Phædra that if her disorder is one which cannot be revealed to men there are women who understand those matters. These facts are alone sufficient to show the mythical character of the story of Agnodice, which is sometimes repeated as though it were sober history. The Athenians, says Hyginus the fabulist, thought so highly of medicine, that they forbade women and slaves to practise it; whereupon many women died through excessive modesty. This induced a certain Agnodice to assume the dress of a man, in which guise she learnt obstetrics from the physician Hierophilus, and afterwards by revealing her sex to her patients acquired an immense practice in that department. Her male colleagues out of jealousy accused her before the Areopagus of corrupting women, but by declaring herself she obtained both her own acquittal, and the repeal of the law. The names Agnodice (holy law) and Hierophilus (which there is no good reason to convert into Herophilus) seem to indicate that the story is an allegory. The only profession open to women was a certain department of medicine. It is clearly just and right that this should be so, and some ingenious person probably invented the above story to account for it. Women in Greece, as in all ages and countries, doubtless did much noble if unnoticed work as nurses. "You know (says Demosthenes) how valuable a wife is to a man when he is ill." 2 NOTES. 1 Rhangabe, Antiq. Hellen., No. 378. Wescher, "Texte et explication d'un Decret en Dialecte Dorien,” Revue Archeologique, 1863, p. 470. 3 Paton and Hicks, Inscriptions of Cos, No. 408. For other inscriptions in honour of physicians see British Museum Insc., Nos. 143, 258, 364; Corp. Ins. Græc., 1897, 3596, 4315n, 6265; C. I. A., ii., No. 256b, iii. 779; Perrot, Exploration de la Gaiatie, No. 27; Ahrens., Philologus, 35, 28; Le Bas, Voyage Archeologique, v., Nos. 161, 314, 568, 1336. + * His name was Damon, and he paid six minæ (about £24) for this partial freedom, about double the average value of a slave at the period (second century); Wescher, Inscriptions à Delphes, No. 234. See the Life of Lykon by Diog. Laertius. 6 Ælian, V. H., 12, 1. 7 Wescher, op. cit., No. 16. Besides the various dictionaries of antiquities, Becker, Charicles, etc., the reader may consult Mahaffy, Social Life in Greece; Welcker, Kleine Schriften, vol. iii., and Hermann, Lehrbuch der Griechischen Antiquitaten, 1882, vol. iv. XVI. EARLY ROMAN MEDICINE. "ROME," says Pliny, "was for six centuries without physicians, but not without physic," and in his Natural History he gives us a copious account of the mixture of simples and superstition of which this physic was composed. EARLY ROMAN MEDICINE. 81 But Pliny is a prejudiced witness; his ideal is the ancient Roman of the good old days, whose small farm supplied him with food and with all the medicines which his hardy frame required, and his object is to show that empire, luxury, and physicians all came in about the same time. Yet even by his own account, the first Greek practitioner came to Rome in the year of the city 535, and other writers mention "medici" at a much earlier date. The native Roman medicine may be briefly dismissed. King Numa is said to have declared that all diseases come from the gods, and are to be averted by prayer and sacrifice. The number of medical divinities was very great, for besides Apollo and Minerva, temples were dedicated to Febris, Mephitis, and even, it is said, a Dea Scabies, while the young mother might appeal to no less than fourteen goddesses, from Juno Lucina down to Prosa and Portvorta. In later times this primitive medicine was modified in two directions by the magic of Etruria and by the more rational practice of the Greek colonies in South Italy, and indications of both these influences are seen in the works of Pliny's favourite hero, Cato the Censor, who hated all Greeks, and especially hated Greek physicians. In his book On Agriculture Cato gives directions for treating sick slaves and cattle, of which the latter are most important. For oxen he prescribes a remedy in which three is the ruling number-three grains of salt, three laurel leaves, three leaves of rue, etc., to be given three times a day for three days; both the animal and the giver of the drug must be fasting, and both must stand erect. Of like nature are the incantations which he recommends for cases of fracture and dislocation. But Cato's grand panacea is cabbage, the favourite vegetable of the Pythagoreans. He gives it internally both raw and cooked; he applies it as a poultice to sores, declaring that it will even cure cancer; and he squirts its juice into sinuses and fistulæ by means of a syringe composed of a bladder tied to a reed. If a slave is ill and |