162  ^DISMEMBERMENT  OF  PHARMACY  FROM  PHYSIC. 
were  little  better  than  specious  imposters.  An  indignant  Roman, 
who  had  some  experience  of  doctors,  and  wished  to  perpetuate 
his  opinion  of  the  skill  of  those  who  attended  him  during  his  last 
illness,  directed  the  following  inscription  to  be  engraved  on  his 
tomb : 
"Turba  medicorum  perii." 
That  public  shops  were  kept  by  physicians  appears  from 
several  instances,  but  particularly  from  the  fact  stated  by  Cassius 
Haemina  (quoted  by  Pliny),  that  Archagathus,  a  Grecian  physi- 
cian, who  settled  at  Rome  B.  C.  218,  had  a  shop  provided  for 
him  to  receive  his  patients,  bought  at  the  expense  of  the  city  ; 
this  shop  stood  in  the  cross-street  of  Acilius.  On  his  first  arrival 
he  was  much  employed,  and  his  income  was  considerable.  But 
having  an  unlucky  predilection  for  cutting,  cauterising,  and 
amputating,  and  the  Romans  having  a  very  great  disrelish  for 
this  sort  of  practice,  he  soon  lost  his  popularity,  and  was  called 
the  human  butcher.  This  man's  unpopularity  brought  the  whole 
profession  into  disrepute  at  Rome.  Plautus,  who  flourished  two 
centuries  before  Christ,  in  his  comedy  called  Mercator,  puts  into 
the  mouth  of  one  of  his  characters,  "  ibo  ad  medicum  atque  me 
ibi  toxico  morti  dabo."  This  is  an  important  sentence — "  I  will 
go  to  a  physician,  and  there  terminate  my  existence  by  poison." 
It  appears  that  the  physicians  kept  shops  or  magazines  where 
medicines  and  poisons  could  be  bought,  and  where  it  was  not  un- 
usual for  the  patient  to  swallow  the  dose. 
Scribonius  Largus  lived  in  the  reigns  of  the  Emperors  Tiberius 
and  Claudius,  that  is,  in  the  middle  of  the  first  century  of  the 
Christian  era.  He  was  certainly  a  physician,  although  Dr. 
James  calls  him  "  a  medicinal  writer ;"  for,  in  his  epistle  to 
Caius  Julius  Callisto,  he  says,  "  Hippocrates  conditor  nostrse 
professionis,"  and  a  practising  one  also  ;  for,  speaking  of  the  use 
of  a  certain  remedy  in  many  disorders,  he  says — "  et  ego  magna 
ex  parte  expertus  sum."  That  he  compounded  his  own  medicine 
appears  from  his  own  peroration,  where  he  says,  "  harum  com- 
positionum  ipse  composui  plurimas."  And  that  he  kept  ready- 
prepared  medicine  for  his  patients,  or  officinal  formulae,  appears 
from  what  he  says  of  a  particular  medicine  of  which  he  thought 
highly,  "  quamobrem  semper  habeo  id  compositum." 
