Schools of Gaul in the last century of the Western Empire : $b A study of pagan and Christian education in the last century of the Western empireHaarhoff, T. J. (Theodore Johannes)
History
Schools of Gaul in the last century of the Western Empire : $b A study of pagan and Christian education in the last century of the Western empire
Haarhoff, T. J. (Theodore Johannes)
Education, Ancient -- France; Gaul -- History -- 58 B.C.-511 A.D.
The frequent grouping of the doctors with the teachers in the Theodosian
Code suggests that the public State-paid physicians taught as well as
practised their art. Reinach[516] warns against certainty on this point,
but it is at least probable. The wording of Constantine’s law[517] of
September 27, 333, confirms the supposition. Doctors and teachers are
proclaimed exempt from military service and public burdens so that they
may have leisure to train others in their art—‘quo facilius studiis
liberalibus et memoratis artibus multos instituant’. Of the original
five classes of _archiatri_ paid by the State—those of the court, those
belonging to the municipalities, the heads of the medicine guilds, those
in charge of the public gymnasia, and those who attended the Vestals—it
was probably the second, the municipal doctors, who were the teachers of
their profession.
If this is so, it proves that Rome was not the only place where doctors
could be trained, as Denk seems to think.[518] Indeed, the provinces
were more interested in medicine than Rome herself. Pliny[519] said
in a broad and general way that for six hundred years Rome had got on
without doctors, and it is well known that the Roman doctors made no
important contribution to the science. Egyptians, Greeks, Gauls—these
were the physicians of Rome. Pliny writes to Trajan asking him to give
the citizenship to a doctor from whom he had derived benefit: ‘est enim
peregrinae condicionis, manumissus a peregrina’.[520] The doctor who
attends Hadrian on his death-bed is a foreigner.[521] Ammianus describes
the growing fame of the Alexandrian school of medicine during the fourth
century, as such, that a man, even if his actual work turned out badly,
need only say that he had been trained at Alexandria in order to gain
commendation.[522]
Then, as now, it was a lucrative profession, according to the proverb
‘Galenus dat opes’;[523] nor did the benefit to the sick always
correspond to the doctor’s gain.[524]
A word may perhaps be added on the _agrimensores_, who represent the
department of science among the Romans that was most scientifically
employed, though all their mathematics came from Hiero of
Alexandria.[525] Their work was partly military (the marking out of
camps and locating of positions for the army) and partly civil (the
surveying of colonies and provinces for revenue purposes). In cases of
‘controversia de loco’, the Theodosian Code appoints them judges.[526]
At first they were free to practise where and when they could, but in
our period they were attached to guilds, and stood under a ‘primicerius
mensorum’.[527] This organization of the ‘agrimensores’ implies a certain
amount of training and a professional test of proficiency.[528]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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