Medicine in ancient Rome

Medicine in ancient Rome was highly influenced by ancient Greek medicine. Doctors combined ideas from the Hippocratic Corpus with treatments like special diets and surgical procedures. Two important Greek doctors, Dioscorides and Galen, worked in Rome and shared their discoveries. Other doctors, such as Soranus of Ephesus and Asclepiades of Bithynia, also helped improve medical knowledge.

Roman medicine had many areas of expertise, like eye care and urinary health, known as ophthalmology and urology. To learn more about the body, doctors performed surgeries using tools such as forceps, scalpels, and catheters. These ideas from ancient Rome helped shape the way doctors treat people today.

Introduction

The Roman Empire mixed Greek and Roman traditions, creating a rich culture over many years. Writers like Cato and Pliny believed in simple healing methods using herbs, chants, prayers, and charms that families could use at home.

Greek medicine came to Italy as the Romans and Greeks built stronger ties. It wasn’t until the healing god Asclepius arrived in 291 BC and the Greek doctor Archagathus came in 219 BC that Roman people widely accepted foreign medical ideas. These ideas blended with Roman ways.

Greek knowledge greatly helped Roman architecture and health care, especially for the Roman army. The army made big steps in medicine. They created a collection of medical writings, hired permanent doctors, built military hospitals called valetudinaria, and began organized care for soldiers who were hurt. The surgical tools found from that time show Romans knew a lot about surgery.

Roman medicine

Roman medicine was heavily shaped by ideas from Greek doctors. Before Greek influence, Roman healing mixed religion and magic, with family leaders or religious figures acting as healers. The first trained doctors in Rome were Greeks. One famous Greek doctor, Asclepiades of Bithynia, arrived in 124 BC and was known for being kind to his patients. He often suggested they drink wine, rest, and use a special swinging couch to feel better.

Roman doctors, like their Greek counterparts, watched and learned from nature instead of relying only on magic. However, they still believed that terrible events like famines or diseases might be punishment from the gods. To avoid such problems, they performed special rituals. They thought a bad air called miasma caused many illnesses and began to understand how diseases could spread. This led to better ways to keep people healthy, like separating the sick from others and cleaning up more.

The Romans built systems to help public health, such as burying people outside the city, having plenty of clean water from aqueducts, public baths, and sewers. They also drained swamps near cities. One of Rome’s most famous doctors was Galen, who studied how the body worked by studying animals in Greece and later became the personal doctor for Emperor Marcus Aurelius.

In 46 BC, Julius Caesar gave Roman citizenship to doctors because the army needed skilled surgeons. After Rome captured the city of Alexandria in 30 BC, they found many valuable books on medicine there. Later, in 10 AD, Emperor Augustus allowed doctors in Rome to avoid certain taxes, but this led many unqualified people to try becoming doctors. To solve this, only a limited number of public doctors in each area were given these tax benefits.

Opposition to Greek medicine in Rome / Pre-Physicians

Cato the Elder did not like the Romans copying Greek ways, including their medicine. He thought having Greek doctors in Rome was dangerous. Before doctors existed in Rome, the head of the family took care of anyone who was sick. Cato the Elder would check on his neighbors and often used cabbage to help with many problems, from trouble with going to the bathroom to not being able to hear. He would tell people exactly how to prepare the cabbage, even mixing it with water and wine to put in someone’s ear if they couldn’t hear. For broken arms or legs, he would use two ends of a cut reed and wrap them around the injury to help it heal.

Contributors

Many Greek doctors came to Rome and believed in balancing the body's natural elements. By around 50 BC, it was common for wealthy families to have Greek physicians. These doctors often studied subjects like biology and philosophy, which helped shape their medical ideas.

Dioscorides

Main article: Pedanius Dioscorides

Pedanius Dioscorides was a Greek doctor who lived in Rome around 40–90 AD. He traveled with the army and learned about many plants and their medical uses. He wrote a book called De materia medica, which listed over 600 herbal cures. This book was very important and was used by doctors for many years.

Galen

Main article: Galen

Galen was a Greek doctor from Pergamon who lived from 129 to around 216 AD. He studied animals because Roman law did not allow human dissections. Galen shared ideas about how the body’s balance affects health. He wrote many books and taught in Rome, becoming a doctor to some Roman emperors.

Asclepiades

Main article: Asclepiades of Bithynia

Asclepiades was a doctor who came to Rome in the 1st century BC. He believed that tiny particles in the body needed to flow freely to keep someone healthy. He used treatments like warm baths, music, and wine to help his patients feel better. He was also the first in Rome to use massage as a way to heal.

Aulus Cornelius Celsus

Main article: Aulus Cornelius Celsus

Celsus was a Roman writer who lived between 25 BC and AD 50. His book De Medicina is one of the best sources we have about Roman medicine. It talks about surgery and different ways doctors thought about treatments. Some doctors focused on what they could see and do, while others tried to understand why treatments worked.

Soranus

Main article: Soranus of Ephesus

Soranus was a Greek doctor who lived in Rome during the time of emperors Trajan and Hadrian (98–138 AD). He wrote a book about women’s health, covering topics like pregnancy and care after childbirth. He also worked on fractures and surgery.

Hospitals

The ancient Romans built the first hospitals, mainly for soldiers and slaves. These hospitals, called valetudinaria, started as small tents near armies. They grew into permanent buildings placed near forts. These early hospitals were built during the time of Emperor Trajan, as the Roman army expanded beyond Italy.

Valetudinaria were used to care for wounded soldiers. They could hold up to 200 patients and had doctors known as medici. There were also workers who helped with care. Some hospitals were for slaves and were not as well equipped. In addition to these hospitals, some doctors opened clinics in shops called tabernae, but these were expensive and did not have beds for patients to stay in. People who could not afford doctors sometimes asked for help at temples dedicated to Asclepius, the Roman god of medicine.

Surgery

Main article: Surgery in Ancient Rome

Surgery was used only when other treatments failed because it was very risky. Doctors mostly worked on the body's surface, as they knew that treating deep injuries to important parts like the brain or heart was too dangerous. Ancient Roman doctors had many tools, like bone levers to take out sick bone or foreign objects stuck in bones. They could perform surgeries such as cataract surgery and caesarean sections, as well as older practices like bloodletting. These surgical methods grew from Greek ideas in the 2nd century, helped by doctors like Galen.

Medicines

Main article: Food and diet in ancient medicine

People in ancient Rome believed that eating the right foods was very important for staying healthy. They thought certain foods could help heal the body or even cause illness, depending on how they affected the body's balance. Common foods used for healing included rice, chickpeas, olives, lentils, garden peas, figs, poultry, eggs, and oysters. Eating in moderation was seen as key to good health. When food alone wasn’t enough, they turned to other treatments like special medical procedures or surgery. Having the freedom to choose their own diet and see doctors shows that people valued their ability to take care of their health.

Roman doctors used many different plant-based medicines and other natural substances. They often got ideas from ancient Greek practices, and many of the plant names they used sound similar to ones we know today, but might not be exactly the same plants. In one discovery from a ship that sank around 120 BC near Populonia, Tuscany, scientists found a medicine chest with small containers holding tablets made from zinc, iron oxide, starch, beeswax, pine resin, and other plant materials. These likely were used as treatments for eye problems.

Treatments

Physicians in ancient Rome aimed to help people who were sick or injured. Sometimes they could not cure an illness, so people also looked to gods for healing. For example, many Romans visited special temples called Asclepieia to seek help from the god Asclepius. They believed the god could speak to them in dreams and give them ways to get better.

Doctors also tried to treat serious battlefield wounds. They examined the injuries carefully and used special stitches to close them. They also used ointments to help healing. In addition, they used a special kind of milk called colostrum from new mothers to help treat different illnesses. This milk was thought to help fight certain infections and was used by both men and women.

Diagnostic methods

Doctors in ancient times used many ways to find out what was wrong with a person. One way was by looking at the person’s dreams. They believed dreams could tell them about the person’s health. If the dreams were about normal everyday things, the person was likely healthy. But if the dreams were strange or confusing, it might mean the person was sick. Doctors would then try to help the person get better by changing their diet or other treatments.

Doctors also looked at the stars and planets to understand health. They thought the positions of the sun, moon, and planets could affect the body. They examined things like a person’s urine or other body fluids to learn more about their health too. This was all part of how they figured out what treatment a person needed.

Textual transmission

Galenic medical texts show the written medical traditions from ancient times. Before this, most medical knowledge was passed down by word of mouth. Galen wrote a huge amount of work — nearly 350 books — which is more than any other writer from that time. Before Galen, a very important book called De materia medica was written by Pedanius Dioscorides. Dioscorides was a Roman doctor with Greek roots. In this book, he described and drew pictures of over 1000 substances and how to use them.

The book De materia medica helped people learn about medicine for many centuries because it was translated into Greek, Arabic, and Latin. Galen wrote in Greek, but his works were also translated into Arabic and Syriac. He talked about and sometimes disagreed with earlier doctors who followed the teachings of the Hippocratic tradition. We learn about other doctors like Herophilus and Erasistratus because Galen wrote about them. Galen also mentioned the work of Soranus, a doctor known for writing about women's health. By combining many ideas from before him, Galen's writings became an important part of medical knowledge for the next 1500 years.