Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub
[ocr errors]

still to undergo a further ordeal, and receive the consent of at least seven of the members of the college before taking his seat amongst them.*

The physicians of the imperial household, and such as were intrusted with the health of the chiefmagistrate, were also styled Archiatri,+ a title which was first enjoyed under Nero, by Andromachus of Crete, but, perhaps, first regularly recognized by Domitian. These court-physicians or Archiatri-Palatini, during the reign of Constantine rose to greater dignity than the Archiatri Populares, or those of the municipalities. But they were occasionally willing to sacrifice their position at the court, in order to obtain the more lucrative office of the municipal institution. Among the Archiatri-Palatini there were also different grades; as counts of the first and of the second order, and other higher dignities. During the reign of Julian these titles of honor were created in great number, and sought after with avidity. Some of the court physicians subsequent to this reign, enjoyed the dignity of Proconsul, others that of Duke, &c. They ranked among the principal officers of State, and some of them, as Oribasius and Cæsarius, were on terms of intimacy with the emperors.

Army physicians, when absent on duty, and private practitioners not of the constituted number, if regularly educated and licensed by the magistrate, were entitled to certain immunities in common with other members of the liberal professions.

* Codex, lib. x., tit. lii., § 10.
Codex, lib. x. tit. ii. § 1, §§ 5, 6.

Receiv

+ Codex, lib. xii. tit. xi. xiii.

ing no public appointment, they trusted to individual patronage for occupation, and had the right of claiming a fair return for their services. Privileges of the same kind were also granted to the obstetrix,* but were withheld from specialists, from medical evil-doers, from the necromancers, exorcists, the religious medical enthusiasts called Perabolani, and the numerous other pretenders who rose up among the people, especially among the Christian portion of them, before the final overthrow of the pagan institutions.+

But if this new order of Christian practitioners received no favor from the law, the spirit that impelled them was one in which the great mass of the community was eagerly participating. Scoffed at and ridiculed at first, they were at length in the ascendant; and they multiplied in proportion to the spread of Christianity. After Justinian had sequestrated the salary of the Pagan teachers for the purpose of building churches, and expelled the few remaining philosophers from their long respected abode in the Academy of Plato, these uneducated practitioners may be said to have nearly supplanted the regularly inducted members of the profession. In the Latin portion of the empire, the debasement of learning was even more rapid and complete than with the Greeks. Yet the schools continued to linger here long after the inroad of the Gothic nations.

* Digest, lib. 1. tit. xiii. § 2.

+ Corpus Juris Civilis. Julii Pauli Recept. Sentent. lib. v. tit. xxiii. § 7. Notes to Digest, lib. 1. tit. xiii. § 3, and Codex, lib xii. tit. viii. § 1.

Novellæ, collect. ix. tit. xv. 132.

Theodoric the Goth even attempted the restoration of learning in the West; and his successor, Athalaric, restored to the professors at Rome the salaries that had been long withheld from them. He also enriched the schools of Milan, Pavia, and other cities.; and Justinian on again acquiring the dominion of the West, confirmed the edict of the Gothic emperor. So that learning may be said to have held some semblance to its ancient rank, up to the final subjugation of Italy by the Lombards.

But though the ancient educational institutions, after the advent of Christianity as a political power, were by degrees discountenanced and forsaken, yet the laws in regard to them were never formally abrogated. Many of them, under the patronage at first of the Bishops, and afterwards of the Benedictine monks, were converted into Christian schools. Some of them in the Eastern portion of the empire, now under the sway of the Saracens, served as starting points for the progress of knowledge, and especially of medical knowledge, among the Arabs. In many of the cities and municipalities of which the Western portion of the empire consisted, and into which it was finally dissolved, traces of the ancient system of medical education and police continued visible throughout the whole of the middle ages; and in connection with other fragments of Roman law not yet laid aside, played no unimportant part in the early development of modern science and civilization.

* Aliæ Aliquot Constitutiones Justiniani, capitula xxii, pp. 237. Elzevir edition.

ERRATA.

For "Telephorus," page 29, last line but one, read Telesphorus.

For "Burgess," page 33, last line, and page 36, tenth line from bottom,

read Burges.

For "Clinicæ,” page 47, fourth line from top, read Clinice.

[ocr errors]

never disconnected by the educated physicians of antiquity, who rejected most of the specialists as impostors.*

[ocr errors]

Of these illegitimate sons of Esculapius, the numbers and pretensions were as great in ancient as in modern times; and they were quite as apt to receive the countenance and favor of the upper classes. Chosroes of Persia was the patron of Uranus; and Nero was the supporter of the audacious Thessalus, who, like Paracelsus, repudiated all learning as useless, and like the still more recent mountebank, Hahnemann, modestly assumed to be above all, and opposed to all, who had ever gone before him. Pliny and Galen are justly severe on most of these ancient impostors. And if we can credit their account of them, the host of industrialists, oculists, rhinoplasts, dentists, bone-setters, herniotomists, lithotomists, gelders, abortionists, and poison-venders, pervading Italy, France, and Spain throughout the middle ages, before whom the modern group of pretenders grow pale and insig nificant,—were at least equaled, if not exceeded, in ignorance, as well as arrogance, by the quacks of Rome.t

[ocr errors]

With regard to schools, besides the cities already mentioned, Athens, Corinth, Berytus, Laodicea, and Cæsarea, among the Greeks; and at different epochs, Milan, Pavia,Traves, Arles, Marseilles, and Bordeaux

* Corpus Juris Civilis Digest, lib. 1. tit. xiii. § iii.

+ Galen, Methodus Medendi, lib. i., cap. i., ii., iii. Vol. x. p. 5, et seq. Pliny, lib. xxix., cap. viii. Corpus Juris Civilis Digest, lib. 1., tit. xiii., 1. 3. et Julii Pauli Recept. Sentent. lib. v. tit. xxiii., §§ 7, 8, 11, 12.

« ForrigeFortsæt »