If a man has many deadly foes, he is likely to take a potion of the precious theriac daily--because antidotes for so many poisons are carried in the compound; and all histories tell how Mithridates of Pontus, that famous adversary of Sulla and Pompeius, used to take antidotes so constantly that he became entirely immune to the venoms prepared by all his enemies. Symmachus, as part of his stock in trade, therefore, keeps the proper antidotes for all such familiar poisons as hemlock, opium, henbane, gypsum, white lead, etc., as well as for many obscurer foods of evil. Rumor says that not long since he had to use several of them on the old ex-consul, Annæus, whose spendthrift sons seemed very anxious to get their inheritance. =144. Medical Students, “Disciples,” Beauty Specialists.=--Symmachus like all responsible physicians keeps an office on a good street, but although patients can visit him there, the place is mainly for the compounding of medicines by various slaves under the direction of several “disciples.” There are no medical schools in Rome,[84] and these young disciples follow their master about, study a little, and learn by watching him. They are kept away from his most select patients; but are allowed to troop into the sick room of the poorer, feel of the pulse, examine the wounds, etc., in a manner most distressing. People, in fact, dread to call in a doctor--it often means being felt over not by one but by a half dozen clammy hands, usually when one is very ill.[85] In addition to the men of medicine are the “beauty specialists”--persons who claim to have reduced the supplementing of nature to a science. A court physician Crito once wrote four books of standard authority on the compounding of cosmetics. Every physician is called upon to prescribe skin washes, depilatories for rendering the bodies of young dandies perfectly hairless, and formulæ for fragrances for clothes or chambers; but it takes a specialist to know the intricacies of rouge and enamel, and otherwise to assist the ladies. The dividing line also between the physician and the hair-dresser is not always easy to mark. Petronius tells about the dames who not merely have abundant false hair, but “take their eyebrows out of a little box” and “put their teeth away at night just as they do their silks.” =145. Cheap Doctors: No Hospitals.=--The inferior grades of doctors do a great deal of office work. In mere booths or small shops opening upon the street they receive patients, sometimes even standing by the door and bidding the hesitant “Step in!” Their surgeries are decked out with a display of ivory boxes, silver cupping glasses, and golden-handled lancets,--the more incompetent the leech the greater often being the display.