WAS THE ROMAN ARMY PROVIDED WITH MEDICAL OFFICERS? Little or nothing has hitherto been written by archæologists regarding the medical staff of the Roman army. Indeed, in none of our common works on Roman antiquities, as in those of Rosini, Kennet, Adam, Smith, Ramsay, etc., is there any allusion whatever made to the question, whether or not the Roman troops were furnished with medical officers. In one anonymous work on Roman antiquities, translated from the French, and published in London in 1750, the subject is referred to, the author stating that during the commonwealth there were no physicians in the Roman armies; and he adds that, even under the Emperors, “it does not appear there were any physicians in the armies, as there are surgeons in ours.”[367] Nor does there exist, as far as I am aware, in the Roman classics, any very distinct allusion to the matter. I have also, in vain, searched among Roman medical authors, and among the writings of the Greek physicians who practised at Rome, for any direct notices, relative to the medical or surgical care of the numerous and scattered armies employed by Rome in the different quarters of the world. In fact, the only passages, with which I am acquainted, relating at all to the subject, consist of a casual remark in one of the military epistles of Aurelian; two incidental legal observations contained in the law writings of Modestinus, and in the Codex of Justinian; an allusion by Vegetius to the medical care and expense of the sick in camp; and an expression by Galen as to the opportunities for anatomical observation presented to the physicians during the German wars. The reference to the medical superintendence of the army by Aurelian occurs in Vopiscus’ Life of that Emperor (chap. vi.) In issuing some peremptory orders regarding the discipline of the army, after enumerating various rigid rules which the soldiers were to observe, Aurelian concludes with the following admonition and announcement:—“Let each soldier aid and serve his fellow; let them be cured gratuitously by the physicians (_a medicis gratis curentur_); let them give nothing to soothsayers; let them conduct themselves quietly in their hospitia; and he who would raise strife, let him be lashed.”[368] The date of this order is not earlier than A.D. 270, the year when Aurelian became Emperor. When treating of those who, by absence from Rome, etc., were exempted from some burthens and taxes, the jurist Modestinus, who wrote in the earlier half of the third century, mentions, among others, the military physicians (_Medici Militum_), “because,” he adds, “the office which they fill is beneficial to the public, and ought not to be productive of any injury to themselves (quoniam officium, quod gerunt, et publice prodest, et fraudem eis adferre non debet”).[369]