01-20-2005, 06:12 PM
Admist these evidences of advanced technology were strange lacunae. At the baths, for example, one followed a good sweat in the calidarium by having one's skin scraped with a strigil made of bone and wood. Why scrape? Why not a thorough soap and rinse? Because the Romans had neglected to invent soap. what maeks this omission so striking is the other ways in which the ancient Romans' lives were just like ours. In ancient Rome, people lived in apartment buildings, followed professional sports, went out for a drink at the local bars, picked up a quick bite to eat from a fast food restaurant, whistled popular songs. They hunched over board games in public parks, had household pets, went to the theatre, carried on extensive correspondence, ran complex business enterprises. Men went to barbershops and women went to hairdressers. The wealthy of Rome dressed for dinner, escaped from the noise of the city to their beach homes, and collected fine wine (the vintage of -121 was so famous that bottles of it were still being hoarded two centuries later).<br>
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But Rome had no soap. And so it is with dozens of other aspects of Roman life which were nothing whatsoever like our own. Take medical care, for example. Some kinds of medical facilities were extensive. Every charted city maintained a corps of physicians who worked in complexes that were typically well-designed and spacious. Most slave-owning homes included a slave physician and an infirmary in which sick slaves could be tended. Rome's water supply was abundant and sanitary. An elaborate sewage system carried off waste water, and Rome maintained public latrines, with marble seats (some of them heated in winter), flushed by a stream of running water. Private physicians abounded, and the fashionable ones made a good living -- 600,000 sesterces in one instance that has come down to us, equivilant to a six-figure-dollar income today. Physicians made house calls, and hada vast array of medications. An able Roman surgeon had a set of instruments as good as any that would be available to the French Revolution (200 different kinds of surgical instruments have been found at Pompeii), and he was able to conduct a number of sophisticated operations with them -- repairs of hernia and fistula, removal of gall stones and abscesses, and plastic surgery for removing the brands of slaves who had become freedmen. The Roman physician could set fractures and amputate limbs as professionally as any physician until 20C. The obstetrics of the time included podalic version, turning the fetus in the uterus, a life-saving technique that was forgotten for a thousand years after the Roman Empire fell.<br>
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However: The same Rome had no public hospitals and threw its garbage in the street. The pristine water from the mountains flowed through lead pipes, slowly poisoning the population. The surgeon had no anesthesia and no knowledge of antiseptic practice. The clinical descriptions of disease were reasonably accurate, but the etiology of those diseases was conjecture, almost always wrong. The understanding of human anatomy and physiology was fragmentary. So while Galen, whose work would be considered definitive until the Renaissance, understood that blood ebbed and flowed, he did not understand that it circulated. Erasistratus correctly noted the difference between sensory and motor nerves, but thought they were hollow tubes carrying liquid. And so it was with most knowledge of the human physiology: a few half-truths alongside a mountain of error.<br>
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The inventory of medicines contained a few useful items -- the juice of mandroga and atropin, drugs for nulling pain, for example. But the rest of the Roman physician's vast materia medica consisted of varieties of snake oil. In the office of that physician I mentioned with an annual income of 600,000 sesterces were chests with titles such as "Eye-salve tried by Florus on Antonia, wife of Drusus, after other doctors had nearly blinded her": "Drug from Berytus for watery eyes. Instantaneous"; and "Remedy for scab. Tested successfully by Pamphilius during the great scab epidemic." The ingredients in this ointments and medicines might be hyena skin, dried centipedes, or a variety of mammalian excretions. Thus one Roman was led to observe sourly that "Diaulus has been a surgeon and is now an undertaker. At last he's begun to be useful to the sick in the only way that he's able."<br>
<br>
We cannot reconstruct life expectancy with precision, but the available data are grim. The experience of a few famous families, who presumably had access to state-of-the-art medical care, shows high infant mortality, and the fragmentary data about common folk are even worse -- of 164 surviving epitaphs of Jews in Rome, for example, 40 percent are of children below the age of 10. Nor was adulthood safe. Appendicitis, strep throat, or an infected scratch could easily be fatal in Antonine Rome. <p></p><i></i>
<br>
But Rome had no soap. And so it is with dozens of other aspects of Roman life which were nothing whatsoever like our own. Take medical care, for example. Some kinds of medical facilities were extensive. Every charted city maintained a corps of physicians who worked in complexes that were typically well-designed and spacious. Most slave-owning homes included a slave physician and an infirmary in which sick slaves could be tended. Rome's water supply was abundant and sanitary. An elaborate sewage system carried off waste water, and Rome maintained public latrines, with marble seats (some of them heated in winter), flushed by a stream of running water. Private physicians abounded, and the fashionable ones made a good living -- 600,000 sesterces in one instance that has come down to us, equivilant to a six-figure-dollar income today. Physicians made house calls, and hada vast array of medications. An able Roman surgeon had a set of instruments as good as any that would be available to the French Revolution (200 different kinds of surgical instruments have been found at Pompeii), and he was able to conduct a number of sophisticated operations with them -- repairs of hernia and fistula, removal of gall stones and abscesses, and plastic surgery for removing the brands of slaves who had become freedmen. The Roman physician could set fractures and amputate limbs as professionally as any physician until 20C. The obstetrics of the time included podalic version, turning the fetus in the uterus, a life-saving technique that was forgotten for a thousand years after the Roman Empire fell.<br>
<br>
However: The same Rome had no public hospitals and threw its garbage in the street. The pristine water from the mountains flowed through lead pipes, slowly poisoning the population. The surgeon had no anesthesia and no knowledge of antiseptic practice. The clinical descriptions of disease were reasonably accurate, but the etiology of those diseases was conjecture, almost always wrong. The understanding of human anatomy and physiology was fragmentary. So while Galen, whose work would be considered definitive until the Renaissance, understood that blood ebbed and flowed, he did not understand that it circulated. Erasistratus correctly noted the difference between sensory and motor nerves, but thought they were hollow tubes carrying liquid. And so it was with most knowledge of the human physiology: a few half-truths alongside a mountain of error.<br>
<br>
The inventory of medicines contained a few useful items -- the juice of mandroga and atropin, drugs for nulling pain, for example. But the rest of the Roman physician's vast materia medica consisted of varieties of snake oil. In the office of that physician I mentioned with an annual income of 600,000 sesterces were chests with titles such as "Eye-salve tried by Florus on Antonia, wife of Drusus, after other doctors had nearly blinded her": "Drug from Berytus for watery eyes. Instantaneous"; and "Remedy for scab. Tested successfully by Pamphilius during the great scab epidemic." The ingredients in this ointments and medicines might be hyena skin, dried centipedes, or a variety of mammalian excretions. Thus one Roman was led to observe sourly that "Diaulus has been a surgeon and is now an undertaker. At last he's begun to be useful to the sick in the only way that he's able."<br>
<br>
We cannot reconstruct life expectancy with precision, but the available data are grim. The experience of a few famous families, who presumably had access to state-of-the-art medical care, shows high infant mortality, and the fragmentary data about common folk are even worse -- of 164 surviving epitaphs of Jews in Rome, for example, 40 percent are of children below the age of 10. Nor was adulthood safe. Appendicitis, strep throat, or an infected scratch could easily be fatal in Antonine Rome. <p></p><i></i>
![[Image: ebusitanus35sz.jpg]](http://img216.exs.cx/img216/8972/ebusitanus35sz.jpg)
Daniel
