The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-02-10
ARMY SURGEONS OF OLD.
HORRORS or 4NCTENT MILITARY
 HOSPITALS
Contrasted With Modern h mnllorntions
 of Treatment.

It IS poor consolation Ill time or dls-
 tress to recall that others are worse off than ourselves Present pains and anx-
 ieties cannot be relieved by the assur-
 ance that human beings were still more
 miserable in ages gone by. Yet, some
 how, worthy folk persist in thinking
 that the sufferer will be cheered by that
 demonstration. At least, it should
 teach him patience; unfortunately he is
 seldom in the mood to learn lessons of
 any sort. But, if there be any solace in
 such reflections, comparison of the
 medical service now established i'll Flu
 ropean armies or in the Boer army, or
 even in the Turkish army, with that of
 former times, must be comforting. 1t IS
 true that curiously little information
 has come down to us upon the subject. If any learned person has collected the
 scattered hints I never chanced to see his work; it would be rather an inter-
 esting theme, But one may venture to
 assert that in the whole corps of Greek
 literature, though such a vast propor-
 tion Of it deals with war, there are not
 six alusions to the medical arrange ments of an army. Homer speaks of |
 ed heroes, but Thucydides does not It
 would be rash to draw the conclusion
 that they did not exist. But surgeons
 were needed in the wars of old at least as urgently as at this day; If nothing
 is aid about them it may probably be | because they were of no account--a
 class of practitioners whom skilled doc ! tors, and the public also looked down upon. It is open to doubt whether the
 "Ten Thousand had any at all, though of the two references known to us one
 is connected with them. Xenophon saps that on the fifth day of the world famous retreat they halted at certain villages and appointed eight surgeons, for there were many wounded" The expression is odd. Medical men are not commonly appointed" like regimental
 officers, to do a piece of work. Bearing
 in mind that there is no mention of
 these surgeons elsewhere, it seems prob
 able that they were only men chosen
 from the ranks who had special experi
 ence or aptitude for dressing wounds.
 Thus Hippocrates says that the two
 sons of Aesqulapius praied by Homer
 for their ski were not priests" but
 warriors. The other refereice ossurs in
 Xenophons s report of the Spartan mili-
 tary system, where he observes that in
 battle "a safe place is found for the
 surgeons and those who looked after
 the wounded" In fact, 1t may be said
 briefly that all we know about the army medical service of the Greeks is the bare fact that something of the kind ex- isted.
 And no more could be said of the Ro- mans if we had only the written evil dence to guide us. Mr. Long says out right in his careful study of the repub- lfcan system: 'I find nothing about surgeons in the Roman army" And he suggests that the Fabri, the engineers, may have been told off to do what was necessary! Julius Caesar remarks on one occasion that he waited some days after battle in order to look to the wounded, but that is all. Who looked after them, and how, is nowhere hinted. Fortunately, inscriptions remain to show that legion had it's medical ser vice; doctor was attached to each CO., hort, probably. Neither in this nor in | any other science did the Romans ap- | proach the level of the Greeks but their | regmental surgeons were competent | enough to earn the gratitude of the 1 troops, anyhow Several stones have been found upon the wall dedicated by ! soldiers to their P. M O., as one to Ami cius Vergenuus by the First Tungrian Cohort; another by an Ala, squadron, of Spanish cavalry; also stamps of stone, incised with the name of the doc tor, the disease, and he title of the m a 1tnin 1. i... pression of this stamp on wax was car- red to the regimental dispensary by way of a prescription. The medicines, of course, were such as we should call patent, recognized by their names; plenty of them are mentioned by Pliny and writers of all sorts. But the dis pensary had drugs in store and made them up at need
 For such an establishment was dis covered last year at Baded, near Zurich, ,orming part, as we should expect, of hospital. And it may be assumed that -he hospital was military one,I de- signed for the use of the very strong garrison the Seventh and Eighth Ie- sions occupying Vindonissa close by. t is discovery unique up to the pres mt and profoundly interesting on that account, though among the objects ound there was nothing to astonish the { earned They have long been aware hat surgical instruments of conplica- , ed form, quite madern inventions with IS, were used in Rome, and even in Athens, for the things themselves may 7 e inspected under glass case in the 2 nuseums there. But the public at large , nay be surprised to hear that this an- f tent hospital was furnished, as the 1 Times report states with many kinds f f medical. pharmaceutical and surgi- f al apparatus, the latter including ' robes, tubes, pineers, cauterizing in- f truments, and even a collection of | 'afety pins used in bandaging wounds. T here were also medical spoons in bone. :, nd silver measuring vessels, jars and i ots for ointment, some still contain lg traces of tbe ointment used" As f pr safety pins, such an ingenius dis h overy of our own times, they will be f 1und among the prehistoric antiquities Q l tho Copenhagen museum f ascending to the middle ages. blank Y arkness envelops us again. Doctors S of sorts" accompanied a feudal army, ll erhaps, for they are mentioned oaca- O Onally. ,JOiuVille snealSs of the,,, opoe s