Related article

The human dissections of Herophilus and others in Alexandria were not to be repeated for a long time. In Rome the dissection of cadavers was forbidden by law. The Romans generally disdained physicians and believed that caring for the sick should take place within the family. Their contribution to modern medicine: public health. Roman engineering skills combined with an obsession with cleanliness resulted in huge public systems for water and sewage. The Romans did not understand why sanitation was important, but they noted that it seemed to help contain disease.

The Roman elite were not unfamiliar with Greek medicine. Celsus, a 1st-century CE landowner, wrote a massive history of medicine going back to the Trojan War. Some sections of this work deal with surgery, and one gives a notable description of the signs of infection in surgical wounds.

The most famous physician of the Roman era was Galen, who ministered to the gladiators and then served the emperor Marcus Aurelius. Galen compiled a medical text whose influence endured for 1,500 years. He stressed anatomical knowledge. His work is full of remarkably detailed and accurate observation concerning nervous system, for example. However, he only dissected animals, and he made many fundamental errors that were not refuted for centuries. Most notably, he believed that there were two systems of blood in the body, arterial blood emanating from the heart and venous blood from the liver. He also thought that blood passed from right to left ventricle of heart through pores in the septum.

Image courtesy of National Library of Medicine. This woodcut from a 1550 edition of Galen’s Opera Omnia depicts a variety of medical procedures, including dentistry and wound treatment.

Image courtesy of National Library of Medicine. Bloodletting was a common medical treatment in the beginnings of modern medicine. This woodcut shows a woman receiving this treatment.

Blood letting, to remedy humoral imbalances, was a treatment used in the traditional medicines of both India and Greece. This treatment involved literally drawing blood from the patient, sometime using leeches to suck the blood out. Galen embraced blood letting with particular enthusiasm. Whereas Hippocrates suggested the treatment of fevers by starvation ("starve a fever, feed a cold" is a familiar formulation), Galen prescribed letting blood drain from the veins to cool the body. If the illness was severe, he recommended bleeding twice a day, the second time draining blood until the patient fainted.

Galen also relied heavily on herbal prescriptions, which he concocted himself. One, called theriac, was a compound of more than 70 ingredients in Galen’s time. Later, it came to consist of more than 100 drugs (including opium) and was used as an all-purpose antidote. Theriac appeared in pharmacopeias (books listing drug treatments) as late as the 19th century. This is perhaps the most important point about Galen. His work, including his misconceptions, dominated medical knowledge and practice in Europe for a very long time.

Rome wasn’t the only place where Greek ideas of medicine took root. Greek practices formed the basis of medical practice in the Islamic world.