=139. Superior Class of Physicians.=--Nevertheless, the physicians of Rome are by no means all of them charlatans. If their theories are grossly imperfect, many of them are men of wide experience and keen insight. A sick man able to command the best, need not give up in despair unless his case is really complicated and difficult. Great cures are recorded, as that of Augustus, whose life was saved in a most critical illness by the “cold-water treatment” ordered by his doctor, the wise freedman Antonius Musa--a cure which by saving an all-important life affected the world’s history. Whatever their qualifications, physicians, if not highly educated, assuredly abound in large numbers. Every chartered city maintains a corps of them for the free treatment of the citizens, and keeps up public _hiatreia_--well-lighted, spacious halls for offices and dispensaries.[79] Every cohort of the army has four physicians attached, with superior medical officers over the larger divisions, and camp sanitation has been worked out excellently by the Roman military experts. In the Imperial Court, the _archiater_ (“head physician”) is a well-paid and very important dignitary. Between him and the miserable slave doctors who bleed and physic their fellows in the private familia there are any number of gradations. Most of the doctors, of course, practice for fees, although in Rome, too, a system of free clinics and dispensaries is coming in, with a special public physician for each of the fourteen regions of the city. =140. A Fashionable Doctor.=--A doctor of the superior kind is Symmachus whom Calvus summons whenever any of his own family are seriously ill. He has one of the most fashionable practices in Rome, and his annual income is not much under that of Quintus Stertinus whose fees in Claudius’s day brought him 600,000 sesterces ($24,000) per year. A high-grade physician does not render a monthly bill. He expects to be paid once annually--on the first of January. Besides he counts on receiving a substantial legacy whenever a regular patient at length escapes him and dies. Lower grade doctors, however, are less delicate. They are charged with being greedy for unreasonable fees and with prolonging illnesses easily curable, demanding outrageous sums for common medicines, and taking every sordid advantage of the needs of the sick. [Illustration: INVALID WITH ATTENDANTS.]