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MEDICAL TEACHING IN ROME. 121
THE MEDICAL PROFESSION IN ROME.
The practice of the medical profession was, as has
already been said, free to anyone without his being
obliged to show by any examination his fitness for the
same; but as. early as 88 B.C., the Lex Cornelia made
him liable to arrest if death was brought about by his
fault. Moreover the candidature for employment in the
public sanitary service, and for reception among the number
of doctors favoured by definite privileges, so too the con­
ditions of suing for medical fees, and especially the
•extraordinaria cognitio, must have afforded occasion for a
distinction being made in practical life if not in law,
between the scientifically trained doctors and the dabblers'
in medicine.*
Since many doctors had received a training that was
incomplete and limited to certain departments, not
having been taught in all branches of medical science,
they, under these circumstances, attached themselves to
certain parts of it. They could in a shorter time acquire
thein- knowledge necessary for practice in a narrowly circum-
,s\g scribed department of the healing art. Specialities,
.isai the beginnings of which reach back to an earlier period'
ibri gradually acquired a bad reputation, becoming not so
;ca| much the indication of extraordinary efforts in a special
sphere as of half-educated charlatanry. The representa­
tives of this class exposed their weakness in an awkward
manner in their intercourse with educated doctors, and
served for favourite objects of scorn to the comic
dramatists.
The sub-division of medical work was exaggerated
;bisi. in a senseless manner. There were not only surgeons,
accoucheurs, gynaecologists, ophthalmic surgeons, dentists,'
and aurists, but also specialists for nearly every
part of the body. Some confined themselves to the
* TH. LOWENFELD : Inaestimabilitat und Honorirung der artes liberates nach
Tomischem Recht, Miinchen 1887, S. 428.
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