Note 381 — WAS THE ROMAN ARMY PROVIDED WITH MEDICAL OFFICERS?

Xenophon’s expression (ιατροὺς κατέστησαν ὀκτω) has been supposed by some commentators to indicate that eight soldiers, perhaps previously experienced to some extent in tending the wounded, were selected and improvised into medical officers, rather than that eight were chosen out of a greater number of medical attendants present with the army. But, in all probability, there were present among the ten thousand Greeks more than eight men who professed the imperfect medical knowledge pertaining to the surgeons of that day. In a later part of the Anabasis (v. 8), Xenophon, in defending himself against accusations of alleged severity on his part, in the course of the retreat, to some of the soldiers under his command, argues for its necessity on the principle that “physicians also use incisions and caustics for the good of their patients.” He owns to having urged some, when themselves unwilling, to continue their march towards the shores of the Black Sea, through the cold and snows of Armenia, “because,” says he, “sitting down and rest made the blood to congeal, and the toes to rot off, which was the case of a great many,”—a result that lately happened only too frequently to the soldiers of our own armies on the opposite or Crimean shores of the Euxine.