laves, as earning money by either
bodily or mental labor was considered beneath the dignity of a Roman
citizen. The wealthy Romans, who owned large estates and numerous
slaves, were in the habit of purchasing some of these slave doctors, and
thus saving medical fees by having them attend to the health of their
families.

By the beginning of the Christian era medicine as a profession had
sadly degenerated, and in place of a class of physicians who practised
medicine along rational or legitimate lines, in the footsteps of the
great Hippocrates, there appeared great numbers of "specialists," most
of them charlatans, who pretended to possess supernatural insight in the
methods of treating certain forms of disease. These physicians rightly
earned the contempt of the better class of Romans, and were made the
object of many attacks by the satirists of the time. Such specialists
travelled about from place to place in much the same manner as the
itinerant "Indian doctors" and "lightning tooth-extractors" do to-day.
Eye-doctors seem to have been particularly numerous, and these were
divided into two classes, eye-surgeons and eye-doctors proper. The
eye-surgeon performed such operations as cauterizing for ingrowing
eyelashes and operating upon growths about the eyes; while the
eye-doctors depended entirely upon salves and lotions. These eye-salves
were frequently stamped with the seal of the physician who compounded
them, something like two hundred of these seals being still in
existence. There were besides these quacks, however, reputable
eye-doctors who must have possessed considerable skill in the treatment
of certain ophthalmias. Among some Roman surgical instruments discovered
at Rheims were found also some drugs employed by ophthalmic surgeons,
and an analysis of these show that they contained, among other
ingredients, some that are still employed in the treatment of certain
affections of the eye.

One of the first steps taken in recognition of the services of
physicians was by Julius Caesar, who granted citizenship to all
physicians practising in Rome. This was about fifty years before the
Christian era, and from that time on there was a gradual improvement
in the attitude of the Romans towards the members of the medical
profession. As the Romans degenerated from a race of sturdy warriors and
became more and more depraved physically, the necessity for physicians
made itself more evident. Court physicians, and physicians-i