First Aid in the Roman Army

[M. Caecilius]

I dont know much about this, but I know they had better medical practices than we did in the civil war. They knew alcohol sterilized wounds and that opium could be used as an anesthetic (although they didn't know to give dosages based on body mass, and they ended up killing their patients). They used the Citron for various things.

That's all I got.

Thanks. Any contribution is appreciated!

As far as sterilisation went, they appear to have used vinegar and, most importantly, honey as well. I've been told - IIRC, I don't want to misquote, by Oliver Teske (http://www.roemischer-vicus.de/p_medicus.htm) - that the Romans lacked distillation equipment and would thus not have alcohol strong enough to really make a difference. Still, better than nothing. Honey, however, was apparently the main ones - and is used in many salves described by ancient authors. Apparently, it's still used today in some salves.

Strangely enough, I haven't found any indications about opium being used as an anesthetic. It may go without saying - Celsus, Pliny the Elder, and others, go on at length about its pain-relieving and sleep-inducing properties (as well as about its potentially lethal nature) - but the only place where medication used to perform near-painless surgery is mentioned specifically is in the case of the mandrake (both by Pliny and Dioscurides, though the former may be using the latter; see my other thread about the Mandragora Officinalis: Celsus mentions several pain-relieving drugs (some useless, some lethal), but his only contribution to anesthesia seems to be to advise surgeons to ignore their patients' cries (VII.1). For which also this little clip

As regards body-mass and dosage, yes... much of this seems to have been trial-and-error. Celsus often mentions the differences of methods and medications used depending on whether the patients exercise or are generally idle, and whether they are thin or obese, but as opposed to modern calculations, his guidelines are so vague they don't even to be termed rule-of-thumb. As the Germans say in these cases, "Operation gelungen; Patient tot" (operation successful; patient dead).