MILITARY MEDICINE CHAMBERLAIN. 237 



there were no special surgeons for the armies. A regular military 

 medical service dates from the time of the Emperor Augustus. At 

 one period we are told that each cohort of 420 men had four sur- 

 geons, while each legion of 10 cohorts had a legionary physician. 

 In the navy there was one physician to each trireme. The physicians 

 were Romans, or naturalized foreigners, and received special instruc- 

 tion for their vocations. At this date hospitals {valetudinaria) were 

 established for the severely wounded who were cared for by male 

 attendants. Physicians to Roman legions were of two grades, but 

 commanded little respect, and their standing was on a par with 

 that of the noncommissioned officers. Under the influence of Chris- 

 tianity it became possible to secure more capable surgeons, and non- 

 combatant hospital corps men and litter bearers came into use. Their 

 duty was to remove the seriously wounded to a place of safety, and 

 to care for them, receiving a reward in silver for each man saved. 

 They were required to carry a supply of drinking water and to fur- 

 nish it as long as the wounded suffered from burning thirst. Each 

 army had a common hospital. The physicians had no executive 

 power and were subordinate to noncommissioned officers. 



Abul Kasem, an Arabian surgeon of note living in the latter 

 part of the tenth century, in his work on medicine, devoted to the 

 practice of military surgery a chapter which embodied his own ex- 

 perience on the battlefield. The Helvetians regarded the treatment 

 of the wounded as a sacred duty, but limited its application to their 

 own soldiers, all w T ounded of the enemy being invariably killed. This 

 practice was sanctioned by many other nations. 



After the decline of Rome, armies seem to have been without or- 

 ganized surgical assistance for many centuries. Wounded were re- 

 moved and cared for by their comrades and by female camp fol- 

 lowers. Up to the thirteenth century the practice of medicine was 

 largely carried out by monks, and when this was prohibited by Papal 

 decree, it fell into the hands of the barber-surgeons, who for many 

 years were the only representatives of a sanitary service with com- 

 batant units. The names of two military surgeons, Manniot and 

 Nigellus, are recorded in Doomesday Book, 20 years after the battle 

 of Hastings. In 1300 it appears that an effort was made to estab- 

 lish a medical corps in the English Army, but in the muster roll of 

 1346 no sanitary personnel is mentioned. In 1415, at the battle of 

 Agincourt. there were with King Henry V a physician, a surgeon, 

 and 12 assistants. Physicians, however, were for the nobles, not 

 for the common soldiers. Charles the Bold of Burgundy, in the 

 fifteenth century, is said to have been the first to attach surgeons 

 to troops instead of to officers. Gustavus Adolphus did the same 

 in 1630. 



