PHYSICIAN AND SURGEON. 191 



In later times we see the profession becoming secularized. 



&quot; The union between the priesthood and the profession was gradu 

 ally becoming less and less close ; and, as the latter thus separated 

 itself, divisions or departments arose in it, both as regards subjects, 

 such as pharmacy, surgery, etc., and also as respects the position of 

 its cultivators.&quot; 



Miscellaneous evidence shows that during early Roman 

 times, when there existed no medical class, diseases were 

 held to be supernaturally inflicted, and the methods of treat 

 ing them were methods of propitiation. Certain maladies, 

 ascribed to, or prevented by, certain deities, prompted en 

 deavours to propitiate those deities; and hence there were 

 sacrifices to Febris, Carna, &c. An island in the Tiber, 

 which already had a local healing god, became also the seat 

 of the ^Esculapius cult: that god having been appealed to 

 on the occasion of an epidemic. Evidently, therefore, medi 

 cal treatment at Rome, as elsewhere, was at first associated 

 with priestly functions. Throughout subsequent stages the 

 normal course of evolution w r as deranged by influences from 

 other societies. Conquered peoples, characterized by actual 

 or supposed medical skill, furnished the medical practition 

 ers. For a long time these were dependents of patrician 

 houses. Say Guhl and Koner &quot; Physicians and surgeons 

 were mostly slaves or freedmen.&quot; And the medical profes 

 sion, when it began to develop, was of foreign origin. 

 Mommsen writes: 



&quot;In 535 the first Greek physician, the Peloponnesian Archagathus, 

 settled in Rome and there acquired such repute by his surgical opera 

 tions, that a residence was assigned to him on the part of the state 

 and he received the freedom of the city ; and thereafter his colleagues 

 flocked in crowds to Rome .... the profession, one of the most 

 lucrative which existed in Rome, continued a monopoly in the hands 

 of the foreigners.&quot; 



G67. Opposed to paganism as Christianity was from 

 the beginning, we might naturally suppose that the primi 

 tive association between the priestly and medical functions 

 would cease when Christianity became dominant. But the 



