532 



cultivated medicine as a brancli of a liberal education. It was 

 in this way that Virgd studied the art. 



"From the facts and considerations adduced, it appears 

 that several centuries before the Chi'istian era, and for some 

 time after it, an inferior kind of medicine was practised as a 

 servile or domestic art ; in the same way as cookery, with 

 which Plato continually compares it (Gorgias). It appears 

 also that the higher departments were originally those of the 

 philosophers, from whom it passed into the hands of an equally 

 learned and respectable class, who thenceforward professed me- 

 dicine only. The arrangement was natural and convenient. 

 To possess a domestic, always accessible in case of emergency, 

 who understood at least the incipient treatment of disease, 

 was undoubtedly a source of satisfaction and security in a 

 family, so much so that one is led to suspect the existence of 

 this state of things long before and after they are alluded to in 

 historical records. Traces of this usage are recognisable in 

 comparatively late times ; history informs us that in the courts 

 of the ancient princes of Wales there was always a physician 

 of so humble a gi-ade that even the mead-maker took prece- 

 dence of him.* This personage looks very like the old slave- 

 physician. 



"But it is to be inquired how these slaves acquii'ed whatever 

 medical knowledge they possessed. In ancient times, medi- 

 cine, surgery, and pharmacy, were professed by the same indi- 

 vidual ; but the variety of processes indispensable in phar- 

 macy rendered the employment of menials always necessary. 

 Throughout the wi'itings of the ancient physicians, allusion is 

 fi-equently made, sometimes by name, to these operators, who 

 were always slaves. If we had no positive authority for sup- 

 posing it, probability would lead to the belief that they were 

 the slave physicians, or their instructors. 



" But we have positive information on the subject in one 



* Henry's England, vol. ii. p. -362. 



