pay sixfold the value of the sum under dispute
if the judge decided in court against his claim.

The law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth was strictly
observed in Babylonia. A freeman who destroyed an eye of a freeman had
one of his own destroyed; if he broke a bone, he had a bone broken.
Fines were imposed, however, when a slave was injured. For striking a
gentleman, a commoner received sixty lashes, and the son who smote his
father had his hands cut off. A slave might have his ears cut off for
assaulting his master's son.

Doctors must have found their profession an extremely risky one. No
allowance was made for what is nowadays known as a "professional
error". A doctor's hands were cut off if he opened a wound with a
metal knife and his patient afterwards died, or if a man lost his eye
as the result of an operation. A slave who died under a doctor's hands
had to be replaced by a slave, and if a slave lost his eye, the doctor
had to pay half the man's market value to the owner. Professional fees
were fixed according to a patient's rank. Gentlemen had to pay five
shekels of silver to a doctor who set a bone or restored diseased
flesh, commoners three shekels, and masters for their slaves two
shekels. There was also a scale of fees for treating domesticated
animals, and it was not over-generous. An unfortunate surgeon who
undertook to treat an ox or ass suffering from a severe wound had to
pay a quarter of its price to its owner if it happened to die. A
shrewd farmer who was threatened with the loss of an animal must have
been extremely anxious to engage the services of a surgeon.

It is not surprising, after reviewing this part of the Hammurabi Code,
to find Herodotus stating bluntly that the Babylonians had no
physicians. "When a man is ill", he wrote, "they lay him in the public
square, and the passers-by come up to him, and if they have ever had
his disease themselves, or have known anyone who has suffered from it,
they give him advice, recommending him to do whatever they found good
in their own case, or in the case known to them; and no one is allowed
to pass the sick man in silence without asking him what his ailment
is." One might imagine that Hammurabi had legislated the medical
profession out of existence, were it not that letters have been found
in the Assyrian library of Ashur-banipal which indicate that skilled
physicians were held in high repute. It is improbable, however, that
they were num