Articles liés à Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine
Synopsis
EARLY ROMAN MEDICINE.
O
rigin ofHealing-Temples-Lectisternium-Temple ofAEsculapius-Archagathus-
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of the early Empire.
The origin of the healing art in Ancient Rome is shrouded in uncertainty.
The earliest practice of medicine was undoubtedly theurgic, and common
to all primitive peoples. The offices of priest and of medicine-man were
combined in one person, and magic was invoked to take the place of knowl-
edge. There is much scope for the exercise of the imagination in attempting
to follow the course of early man in his efforts to bring plants into medici-
nal use. That some of the indigenous plants had therapeutic properties was
often an accidental discovery, leading in the next place to experiment and
observation. Cornelius Agrippa, in his book on occult philosophy, states
that mankind has learned the use of many remedies from animals. It has
even been suggested that the use of the enema was discovered by observing
a long-beaked bird drawing up water into its beak, and injecting the water
into the bowel. The practice of healing, crude and imperfect, progressed
3 SIR JAMES ELLIOTT
slowly in ancient times and was conducted in much the same way in Rome,
and among the Egyptians, the Jews, the Chaldeans, Hindus and Parsees, and
the Chinese and Tartars.
The Etruscans had considerable proficiency in philosophy and medicine,
and to this people, as well as to the Sabines, the Ancient Romans were in-
debted for knowledge. Numa Pompilius, of Sabine origin, who was King
of Rome 715 B.C., studied physical science, and, as Livy relates, was struck
by lightning and killed as the result of his experiments, and it has therefore
been inferred that these experiments related to the investigation of electric-
ity. It is surprising to find in the Twelve Tables of Numa references to dental
operations. In early times, it is certain that the Romans were more prone to
learn the superstitions of other peoples than to acquire much useful knowl-
edge. They were cosmopolitan in medical art as in religion. They had ac-
quaintance with the domestic medicine known to all savages, a little rude
surgery, and prescriptions from the Sibylline books, and had much recourse
to magic. It was to Greece that the Romans first owed their knowledge of
healing, and of art and science generally, but at no time did the Romans
equal the Greeks in mental culture.
Pliny states that "the Roman people for more than six hundred years were
not, indeed, without medicine, but they were without physicians."
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