In The Reign of the Cesars : Part 1

Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine
by James Sands Elliott

(Page 6 of 14)

To The Death Of Nero

Long before the settlement of the constitutional status of Augustus in 27 B.C., he had undertaken many reforms. In 34 B.C., Agrippa, under the influence of Augustus, had improved the water supply of Rome by restoring the Aqua Marcia, and Augustus had repaired and enlarged the cloacæ, and repaired the principal streets. Road commissions were appointed 27 B.C. The Aqua Virgo was built 19 B.C. Many of the collegia, or guilds, founded for the promotion of the interests of professions and trades had been misused for political purposes, and Augustus deprived many of them of their charters. Curæ, or commissions, were appointed to superintend public works, streets and the water-supply; and the Tiber was dredged, cleansed and widened, and its liability to overflow reduced. No new building could be built more than 70 ft. high. Augustus also established fire brigades. It has been said that he found the city built of brick and left it built of marble.

He revived many old religious customs, such as the Augury of Public Health, and identified himself closely with the rites and customs of the people. He inculcated that sense of duty which the Romans called pietas, and attempted to improve the morals of the citizens by the enactment of sumptuary laws; the philosophers hoped to do good in the same direction by appealing to the intellect and reason, a method that was equally ineffectual. Marriages and an increased birth-rate were encouraged, and parents were honoured and given special privileges. The wisdom and prudence of Augustus were strangely accompanied by credulity and superstition. He was a profound believer in omens, and attached great importance to astrology. His horoscope showed that he was born under the sign of Capricorn.

He suffered from various illnesses, although in his younger days he looked handsome and athletic. He carefully nursed his health against his many infirmities, avoiding chiefly the free use of the bath; but he was often rubbed with oil, and sweated in a stove, after which he was bathed in tepid water, warmed either by a fire, or by being exposed to the heat of the sun. When, on account of his nerves, he was obliged to have recourse to sea-water, or the waters of Albula, he was contented with sitting over a wooden tub, (which he called by a Spanish name, Dureta), and plunging his hands and feet in the water by turns. His physician was Antonius Musa, to whom was erected, by public subscription, a statue near that of Æsculapius.

During an attack of congestion of the liver when heat failed to give relief, Antonius Musa advised cold applications for the Emperor, which had the desired effect. Suetonius, the historian, wrote that this was "a desperate and doubtful method of cure." A more desperate and doubtful method of cure, however, was carried out by the same physician. He successfully banished an attack of sciatica that greatly troubled Augustus by the expedient of beating the affected part with a stick. Antonius Musa received honours from Augustus, and the Emperor also exempted all physicians from the payment of taxes, and from other public obligations.

In the time of Augustus natural philosophy made little progress, and Virgil strongly desired its advancement. Human anatomy, as a study, had not been introduced, and physiology was almost unknown. In medicine, the standard of practice was the writings of Hippocrates, and the Materia Medica consisted of remedies suggested by the whimsical notions of their inventors.

Pliny wrote that the water cure was the principal remedy in his day, as it was indeed throughout the Empire, and it was certainly the most popular. Seneca was very severe on the sentiment of a poem written by Mæcenas, the friend and counsellor of Augustus, but it serves to reveal some of the most dreaded maladies of the time: -

"Though racked with gout in hand and foot,
Though cancer deep should strike its root,
Though palsy shake my feeble thighs,
Though hideous lump on shoulder rise,
From flaccid gum teeth drop away;
Yet all is well if life but stay."

Malaria was one of the principal causes of mortality in and near Rome in the reign of Augustus Cæsar.

Augustus's fatal illness occurred in A.D. 14 from chronic diarrhœa, and the Emperor, like the true Roman that he was, displayed great calmness and fortitude in his last days.

Tiberius succeeded to the throne in A.D. 14, and began a career of infamy. How little knowledge was likely to gain from his patronage is shown by the fact, recorded by Pliny, that the shop and tools of the artist who discovered how to make glass malleable were destroyed. Assassins and perpetrators of every abomination were the fit companions of this tyrant.

Thrasyllus, the astrologer, lived with Tiberius, who was a firm believer in the magic arts. This reign is made illustrious in the history of medicine by the work of Celsus.

Caligula, who became Emperor in A.D. 34, was guilty of the most inhuman conduct. Criminals were given to the wild beasts for their food, and even people of honourable rank had their faces branded with hot irons as a punishment by order of this mad tyrant.

Published in 1971 by Milford House Inc. Boston, MA.