534 



before the Christian era. This dialogue establishes the fact, 

 if there were no other proof, that there were two kinds of me- 

 dical practitioners in ancient Greece, regular physicians and 

 slave physicians, clearly distinguished by the terms larpog and 

 BovXog in Plato's dialogue, although comprised under the word 

 physician. The slaves derived their knoAvledge by acting in 

 the dispensaries or shops of then- masters ; the slaves attended 

 on slaves, the physicians on the free-born ; the former prac- 

 tised empirically ; the latter investigated symptoms and causes. 

 That the same usage obtained in Rome appears from the autho- 

 rities already adduced, and by the well-known tendency of 

 the Romans to adopt Greek customs. 



" The condition of medicine, and its practice in Greece and 

 Rome, have been always involved in doubt and obscvu-ity by 

 the conflicting statements of ancient historians, which Le 

 Clerc and Danet do not appear to have succeeded in reconcil- 

 ing. PUny says that for more than 600 years from the founda- 

 tion of the city, that is, until the year 218 b. c, there were no 

 physicians in Rome, a siifficiently improbable assertion. On 

 the other hand, Dionysius of Halicamassus says, that during 

 a dreadfid pestilence which raged in Rome u. c. 301, there 

 were not physicians enough to attend the sick, which proves 

 there must have been physicians there. The history of Dio- 

 nysius was written about a century before that of Pliny, and 

 was therefore well known to the latter. Had Pliny under- 

 stood that the persons alluded to by Dionysius were intended 

 to be represented as regular physicians, he certainly would 

 have made some observation on a statement so completely at 

 variance with his own. It appears that the cause of the appa- 

 rent confliction between the two liistorians is, that when Pliny 

 said there were no physicians at Rome for 600 years, he meant 

 regular physicians ; and when Dionysius mentioned the inade- 

 quate number of physicians during the pestilence, he meant 

 slave-physicians, which Pliny well understood, and therefore 

 made no comment. 



