Still, let me repeat, neither in Celsus nor in Paulus Ægineta, nor, indeed, in any other ancient medical work, have we, as far as I know, any allusion to the circumstance of surgeons or physicians being regularly appointed as army medical officers in the Roman army, for the purpose of superintending the treatment of the wounded, or—what is of still greater importance—in order to take professional care of the soldiers disabled by sickness and disease, and whose number in warfare is generally very much greater than the number of those that are disabled in fight. Modern military experience has, in many instances, proved the high importance of the services and superintendence of a medical military staff; and not so much in reference to the care of individual cases, and the cure of the wounded, as in reference to the general health and consequent general strength and success of whole armies. In fact, in war the devastations produced by sickness and disease have often been found greatly more formidable and fatal than any devastations produced by the sword; fevers, dysenteries, and other distempers of the camp, have carried off far more soldiers than the ball or bayonet; malarious and morbific agency has sometimes terminated a campaign as effectually as the highest military strategy; and armies have occasionally, in later times, been as completely destroyed by the indirect ravages of disease as by the direct effects of battle. Nor was the experience of the Roman armies in this respect different from our own. When the Emperor Septimius Severus determined to subdue the whole of Scotland, he about the year 208 led, according to Herodian and Dion Cassius,[386] an army of not less than 80,000 men across the Forth, marched them north, apparently as far as the Moray Firth, and thence returned to York. But though in this course the Roman Emperor nowhere met the enemy in open fight, he is stated to have lost, in this single campaign, not less than 50,000 of his troops. The marshes, fens, woods, etc., of Caledonia were far more destructive to the Roman invaders, than were the spears, long swords (ingentes gladii) and scythed chariots (corvini) of its painted, and almost naked, warriors.[387] We know, from the oft-repeated anecdote regarding Arcagathus, as told by Pliny, that in the early days of republican Rome the practice of medicine was not encouraged among the inhabitants of the Eternal City. But, in the later periods of the empire, Rome abounded with native and foreign physicians; and, when we find the Roman people exalted in so many branches of art and knowledge, we could not but expect that common experience, and results like that of Severus, would have suggested to them the propriety of increasing the strength and success of their armies, by having medical men to watch over the health of the soldiers that were fighting in so many different regions around the Roman standards.