r the waters of Albula, he was contented with
sitting over a wooden tub, (which he called by a Spanish name,
_Dureta_), and plunging his hands and feet in the water by turns.[18]
His physician was Antonius Musa, to whom was erected, by public
subscription, a statue near that of AEsculapius. During an attack of
congestion of the liver when heat failed to give relief, Antonius Musa
advised cold applications for the Emperor, which had the desired effect.
Suetonius, the historian, wrote that this was "a desperate and doubtful
method of cure." A more desperate and doubtful method of cure, however,
was carried out by the same physician. He successfully banished an
attack of sciatica that greatly troubled Augustus by the expedient of
beating the affected part with a stick. Antonius Musa received honours
from Augustus, and the Emperor also exempted all physicians from the
payment of taxes, and from other public obligations.

In the time of Augustus natural philosophy made little progress, and
Virgil strongly desired its advancement. Human anatomy, as a study, had
not been introduced, and physiology was almost unknown. In medicine, the
standard of practice was the writings of Hippocrates, and the Materia
Medica consisted of remedies suggested by the whimsical notions of their
inventors.

Pliny wrote that the water cure was the principal remedy in his day, as
it was indeed throughout the Empire, and it was certainly the most
popular. Seneca was very severe on the sentiment of a poem written by
Maecenas, the friend and counsellor of Augustus, but it serves to reveal
some of the most dreaded maladies of the time:--

"Though racked with gout in hand and foot,
Though cancer deep should strike its root,
Though palsy shake my feeble thighs,
Though hideous lump on shoulder rise,
From flaccid gum teeth drop away;
Yet all is well if life but stay."

Malaria was one of the principal causes of mortality in and near Rome in
the reign of Augustus Caesar.

Augustus's fatal illness occurred in A.D. 14 from chronic diarrhoea, and
the Emperor, like the true Roman that he was, displayed great calmness
and fortitude in his last days.

Tiberius succeeded to the throne in A.D. 14, and began a career of
infamy. How little knowledge was likely to gain from his patronage is
shown by the fact, recorded by Pliny, that the shop and tools of the
artist who discovered how to make glass malleable were destroyed.
Assassins and