The British Journal of Homoeopathy

LECTURE III.-The Introduction of Medicine to Rome-Royal Physicians Asclepiades-Themison and the Methodic School— Episynthetic-Eclectic- Pneumatic — Aretaus Celsus

Galen

and his Cotemporaries.

THE Romans being a people who owed their existence to physical power, and grew to extensive sway by the exercise of temperance, moderation, activity and valour, little required and little valued the art of healing, and, accordingly, they were slow to receive it; and when in later years it found its way into Rome, along with other arts of the Greeks, it excited the jealousy and apprehension of those who, in a corrupter age, desired to retain or recover the simplicity of their earlier history, when the healing of diseases was sought rather by the performance of religious rites or devout attendance in the temples of the gods. than by any scientific methods. Of this form of medical treatment by divination, the Etruscans, a Grecian colony, may be considered the founders, and to them are to be ascribed the various temples of Apollo, Esculapius and others, to which the sick resorted in the hope of divine direction.

But in proportion as the Romans advanced in luxury and in intercourse with the more cultivated Greeks, the more did the VOL. X, NO. XXXIX.-JANUARY, 1852.

practice of medicine become a distinct secular profession among them, followed, however, chiefly by those of the lower grades, often, indeed, by slaves, who kept baths and shops for the sale of medicine, until a more scientific and respectable order was introduced by the arrival of Archagathus 219 B.C. He was at first received with zeal, and every facility was afforded to his practice, until the unusual severity of his treatment alarmed the minds of those accustomed to such different means; and this may have led Cato, 70 years later, to caution his son against the medicine and physicians of the Greeks, who, he asserts, contributed to the ruin of Rome, and employed their art for the destruction instead of the preservation of the inhabitants.

Cotemporary with Cato was Synatus, the physician of Hannibal, of whom little is known but that he practised surgery and used magical incantations in his operations, and that he could charm serpents. The art of charming these creatures seems to be known wherever they are native.

Attalus Philometer, the last king of Pergamos, who left his kingdom as a legacy to the Roman people, paid much attention to medicine, cultivating plants himself in order to become acquainted with their properties, examining poisons and their antidotes by administering them to criminals, and even augmenting the resources of physicians by his own inventions. his taste for medicine he was rivalled by Mithridates, king of Pontus, who is said to have made himself proof against poison by habituating himself to its influence along with an antidote.. What this antidote may have been it is not easy to say, but the poetical description of Q. Serenus Samonicus informs us that on seizing his palace, Pompey was surprised to find that it consisted of two leaves of rue, a grain of salt, two nuts, and two dry figs, to be taken in the morning fasting and followed by a small quantity of wine. What reliance can be placed on this we cannot say, and, in any case, the value of the discovery is almost neutralized by omitting to state the peculiar nuts employed. Various writings on medical subjects were discovered and translated by order of Pompey. Nicomedes, king of Bithynia, cotemporary with Mithridates, is included in the number of royal physicians; to whom may be added, Cleopatra queen

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The British Journal of Homoeopathy, المجلد 10