Note 382 — WAS THE ROMAN ARMY PROVIDED WITH MEDICAL OFFICERS?

De Rebus Gestis Alexandri Magni, lib. ix. cap. 18. In lib. iv. cap. 25, an account is given of the extraction of an arrow from the king’s shoulder, by the surgeon Philip of Acarnania, who had previously cured Alexander of the attack of fever which followed on his bathing, when overheated, in the cold waters of the Cydnus. Curtius speaks (iii. 13) of Philip as one “inter nobiles medicos,” who were present with the army. When describing the well-known incident of the fever draught given by this physician Philip to Alexander, Arrian speaks of him, not as a medical attendant upon the king, but as one “in whose extraordinary skill in physic Alexander had great confidence, because of his success in the camp,” or in attending upon other members of the army.—(Lib. ii. cap. 4.) Alexander himself affected some knowledge of medicine. At least, when Craterus was invalided, and Pausanias, the physician in attendance upon him, proposed to give him a dose of hellebore, Alexander (as we are informed by Plutarch) wrote a letter to Pausanias, expressing his great anxiety about the case, and desiring him to be cautious in the use of this medicine. In Alexander’s own chest-wound, as detailed in the text above, the head of the arrow possibly did not enter the cavity of the thorax, as its point was, according to Plutarch’s account, fixed in the bone (the scapula or a rib?). When Julius Cæsar fell under the daggers of his assassins, out of the twenty-three wounds which he received, there was none that was mortal, in the opinion of the surgeon Antistisius, except the second, a penetrating wound of the breast. (See Suetonius’ Julius, c. 82.) After Epaminondas was fatally wounded at the battle of Mantinea, he refused to allow the iron of the spear with which he was struck to be extracted till the victory was decided—aware that, from its site, death from bleeding would immediately follow—an event which the result confirmed.—(Cornel. Nepos, lib. xv. c. 9.)