THE HISTORY OF VETERINARY MEDICINE. 229 



of the enmity of the medical profession. He soon after left Rome, 

 traveling over Italy, and returned to Pergamos in 169 a. d., but was 

 again called to Rome by the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius 

 Yerus, where he remained until his death, giving public lectures, 

 and busied with his studies and writings. He was the most exten- 

 sive medical author that has ever lived, and appears to have begun 

 his authorship even as a boy. It has been estimated that he wrote 

 some four hundred books, some of them being quite large. He 

 was, indeed, a polyhistorian, and a man of astonishing learning; 

 many of the views of medical authors antecedent to his time are 

 only known to us through his writings. He possessed great analyti- 

 cal and critical ability ; he had seen much himself, and investigated 

 much, and possessed a highly systematic mind, clearing medicine, 

 as it then existed, from much of the superstition and nonsense with 

 which it was burdened. His anatomical knowledge was derived in 

 part from the writings of Herophilus and Erisistratus, and in part 

 from his own dissections, which were made largely upon apes. It 

 had not been possible for a long time to make studies of anatomy 

 upon the human form divine, and this age, which did not pause to 

 sacrifice thousands of human beings at brutal gladiatorial combats, 

 still could not offer one for the good of humanity and the advance- 

 ment of knowledge. Only once, during the German war of Marcus 

 Aurelius, was it allowed the doctors to dissect a human body, but 

 they did not get beyond the situation of the intestines. Never- 

 theless, the writings of this great doctor remained for a thousand 

 years the source from which a knowledge of human anatomy was 

 drawn, and it was only by earnest endeavors, supported by actual 

 inspection, that his great authority was finally shaken. Galen is 

 accredited with saying that " the education of a doctor was incom- 

 plete without a knowledge of the processes of disease among the 

 lower animals." 



The writings of the celebrated Roman veterinary authors, Cato, 

 Yaro, Columella, and Yegetius, which are mostly compilations from 

 earlier writers, may be found collected in " De Rei Rusticse," a good 

 edition of which was given out by Gesner in 1735 : copies of this 

 work may be found in some of our medical and public libraries. 

 These writings contain descriptions of some diseases, much of which 

 is absurd and ridiculous, in the light of the present day. 



" Marcus Portius Cato,* the most ancient of this quartet, was 

 born at Tusculum, or Tivoli, 234, and died 149 b. c. He was of a 

 plebeian family, and served as a soldier under Fabius Maximus, but 



* Schraeder-Hering, loc. tit., p. 15. 



