22. Marcellus Empiricus, _De Medicamentis Empiricis, Physicis, ac

Rationalibus_.” Although the Greeks and Romans knew little of chemistry as we understand the term, they must have possessed considerable skill in the art of secret poisoning, either with intent to kill or to obtain undue influence over certain persons. Poisonous drugs were used as philtres or love-potions, and we know from Demosthenes[479] that drugs were administered in Athens to influence men to make wills in a desired manner. Women were most addicted to the crime of poisoning amongst the Greeks. They were called φαρμακίδες and φαρμακευτρίαι. By the Romans the crime of poisoning was called Veneficium; and here again, as in other times and places, it was most usually practised by women. It lent itself to the weakness of the gentler sex, who could not avenge their injuries by arms, and there is little doubt that many women were as unjustly suspected of poisoning as we know they were of witchcraft in an ignorant age when pestilence and obscure diseases filled the minds of the people with fear and suspicion. Thucydides tells us[480] the Athenians in the time of the great pestilence believed that their wells had been poisoned by their enemies. When the city of Rome was visited by a pestilence in the year 331 B.C., a slave girl informed the curule aediles that the Roman matrons had caused the deaths of many of the leading men of the State by poisoning them. On this information about twenty matrons, some of whom, as Cornelia and Sergia, belonged to patrician families, were detected in the act of preparing poisonous compounds over a fire. They protested that they were innocent concoctions; the magistrates compelling them to drink these in the Forum, they suffered the death they had prepared for others. Locusta was a celebrated female poisoner under the Roman emperors. She poisoned Claudius at the command of Agrippina, and Britannicus at that of Nero, who even provided her with pupils to be instructed in her deadly art. Tacitus tells the story,[481] Suetonius says,[482] that the poison she administered to Britannicus being too slow in its action, Nero forced her by blows and threats to make a stronger draught in his presence, which killed the victim immediately. She was executed under the emperor Galba. Clement of Alexandria refers to the Susinian ointment in use in his time, which was made from lilies, and was “warming, aperient, drawing, moistening, abstergent, antibilious, and emollient,” a truly marvellous unguent indeed if it possessed only half of these virtues. He tells of another ointment called the Myrsinian, which was made from myrtle berries, and was “a styptic, stopping effusions from the body; and that from roses is refrigerating.”[483] * * * * * RUFUS OF EPHESUS, the anatomist, has left us in his works interesting details concerning the state of anatomical science at Alexandria before the time of Galen. In one of his works he says, “The ancients called the arteries of the neck carotids, because they believed that, when pressed hard, the animal became sleepy and lost its voice; but in our age it has been discovered that this accident does not proceed from pressing upon these arteries, but upon the nerves contiguous to them.” He is said to have practised the twisting of arteries for arresting hæmorrhage, a method universally followed at the present day. It is curious that though the ligature and this valuable method of torsion were both known to the ancients, they fell into abeyance in favour of the actual cautery. SENECA, the philosopher (A.D. 3-65), had a very high opinion of the healing art. Perhaps no one has said truer and kinder things of doctors than this philosopher. “People pay the doctor for his trouble; for his kindness they still remain in his debt.” “Thinkest thou that thou owest the doctor and the teacher nothing more than his fee? We think that great reverence and love are due to both. We have received from them priceless benefits: from the doctor, health and life; from the teacher, the noble culture of the soul. Both are our friends, and deserve our most sincere thanks, not so much by their merchantable art, as by their frank good will.”[484] APOLLONIUS of Tyana, the Pythagorean philosopher, was born four years before Christ. His reputation as a miracle-worker and healer was used by the enemies of the Christian faith in ancient times to bring him forward as a rival to the Author of our Religion.[485] The attempt to make him appear a pagan Christ has since been revived.[486] He adopted the Pythagorean philosophy at the age of sixteen. He renounced animal food and wine, used only linen garments and sandals made of bark, suffered his hair to grow, and betook himself to the temple of Æsculapius, who appears to have regarded him with peculiar favour. He observed the silence of five years, which was one of the methods of initiation into the esoteric doctrines of the Pythagoreans. He travelled in India, and learned the valuable theurgic secrets of the Brahmans; in the cities of Asia Minor he had some interviews with the Magi; visited the temples and oracles of Greece, where he sometimes exercised his skill in healing; then he went to Rome, where he was brought before Nero on the charge of magical practices, which was not sustained. In his seventy-third year he attracted the notice of Vespasian. Afterwards he travelled in Ethiopia. Returning to Rome, he was imprisoned by Domitian, and had his hair cut short, because he had foretold the pestilence at Ephesus. He died at the age of an hundred years. It is to be remarked that he never put forward any miraculous pretensions himself; he seems merely to have been a learned philosopher who had travelled widely and acquired vast information from distant sources. The history manufactured for him is plainly an imitation from that of our Lord, concocted by persons interested in degrading the character of Christ.[487] PLINY THE ELDER (23-79 A.D.), the author of the immense encyclopædic work, his famous _Natural History_, was not a man of genius, nor even an original observer, his work is but a compilation, and contains more falsehood than fact, and more absurdities than either. He cannot be called a naturalist, though he wrote on natural history; nor a physician, though he wrote of diseases and their remedies. His work is valuable chiefly as a picture of the general knowledge of his time. The following is an example of the medical lore of the period. Pliny says that a woman dreamt that some one was directed to send to her son, a soldier in Spain, some roots of the dog-rose. It happened that exactly at that time her son had been bitten by a mad dog, and had received a letter from his mother, who had dreamt about him, and she begged him to use these roots as she directed. He did so, and was “protected” from hydrophobia, as were many others of his friends who adopted the same treatment. Thus it was that the wild-rose was called the dog-rose. DIOSCORIDES lived in the first or second century of our era. He was a physician who rendered greater services than any other to Materia Medica. His work on this subject was the result of immense labour and research, and remained for ages the standard authority; it contained a description of everything used in medicine, and is a most valuable document for the historian of the healing art of the period. Galen highly valued the work of Dioscorides, which must have been of the greatest use to the doctors of the time, who were obliged to prepare their own medicines. Drugs were so much adulterated that it was unsafe to procure them from the stores in Rome. MARINUS was a famous anatomist, who lived in the first and second centuries after Christ. Galen’s tutor Quintus was one of his pupils. He wrote many works on anatomy, which Galen abridged and praised, saying that he was one of the restorers of anatomical science. QUINTUS, an eminent Roman physician of the second century, was a pupil of Marinus. He was celebrated for his knowledge of anatomy. ZENON lived in the fourth century, and taught medicine at Alexandria. Julian (A.D. 361 _circ._) wrote in very high terms of the medical skill of this physician. MAGNUS OF ALEXANDRIA was a pupil of the above, who lectured on medicine at Alexandria, where he was very famous. He wrote a work on the urine. IONICUS OF SARDIS studied under Zenon. He was not only distinguished in all branches of medicine, but was versed in rhetoric, logic, and poetry. THEON OF ALEXANDRIA, of very uncertain period, probably in the fourth century after Christ, wrote a celebrated book on _Man_, in which he treated of diseases in a systematic order, and also of pharmacy.