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MEDICINE IN ROME.
dominion and even improved it, probably contributing
materially to that remarkable expansion which the art of
sealing experienced under the Arabs.
MEDICINE IN ROME.
THE Italian peninsula formed for centuries the scene of
embittered quarrels and feuds, the final result of which was
the subjection of isolated communities to the Roman
dominion. The small rural states, which by degrees were
swallowed up in the general Roman commonwealth, had
devoted but little attention to the arts and sciences, and the
Etruscans only could show any pretence to acquisitions of
civilization containing germs rich in promise of future
development. The science of medicine exhibited a
character partly theurgical, partly empirical. Prayers
offerings, mystical and magical sentences, and invocations
of deities, along with certain potent simples, the action of
which chance had taught and experience confirmed, formed
the principal materia medica of which the people availed
themselves in sickness. Some knowledge of the treatment
of wounds they also possessed, as well as of such subjects
as the arrest of bleeding and the cure of fractures and
dislocations. SENECA * characterizes the position of the
healing art of that period appropriately in the words :
medicina quondam paucarum fuit scientia herbarum
quibus sisteretur fluens sanguis, vulnera coirent.
A real medical profession did not exist, and good friends,
charitable women, and true devoted servants afforded, as in
Homer's time, in case of necessity the required help. The
Romans considered that the foundation and extension of
their political power were the only employments which
claimed the enlistment of the energies of the nation.
Having concern with things of inferior importance such as
the healing art appeared to them opposed to such aims.
The sum of medical knowledge was from this circumstance
* Epist. 95.
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