The Roman Medecine, Part 4

The right of the doctors

The laws

Naturally, from the arrival of the Greeks and their scientific but disastrous medicine practised by incompetent people, Romain quickly realized that the power detained by the doctors was dangerous, and that it was necessary to punish the doctors committing of serious mistakes. Laws exist for it.

Lex Aquilia

This law, dated 286 b. J.C., what explains (among others) what risks a doctor who makes a grave error by treating a slave: this law engages the responsibility of the doctor - and of the owner of the doctor if the latter is a slave - towards the owner of the badly looked slave. Generally, the doctor or his owner adjust the conflict by paying a certain sum to the owner of the slave.

Lex Cornelia de iniuriis

The law Cornelia, proposed by Sylla in 84 b. J.C., punishes every person responsible for a manslaughter. So, a doctor who uses voluntarily some poison on a patient or who hurts him with the aim of killing him, but also a person who makes or sells some poison or dangerous medicine, is criminal. Will then come to be added to this law the ban on the castration and on the abortion.

Other texts of law

Antoninus Pius limits the number of doctors by city. Severus Alexander's law modifies the status of the doctors of the emperor who pass of the rank of servants in that of the state employees, and touch fixed fees. 

The law encourages the doctor to demand unpaid fees.

The doctors's hierarchy

All the doctors of the Roman territory are not equal. The Roman law establishes a hierarchy between them. This organization is described in the Codex Theodosianus. it is about a collection collecting all the Roman laws created since the reign of emperor Constantine the Great. it was drafted by Theodosius II and came into effect in 439 ap. J.C.. The leader of the Roman medical device is the comes archiatorum held by the law to be noble. In the lower rank is archiatri. These characters, paid by the State, are in charge of watching the doctors in the zone which was attributed to them and to adjust the medical conflicts. Numerous privileges are granted to them: they do not pay taxes, cannot be threatened by the law and their house cannot be occupied by military troops.

There are two types of archiatri : the archiatri palatii who preside to the palace, and the archiatri populares who provide medical care free in the most deprived. Finally, the other doctors do not benefit from the same privileges as archiatri and is under their supervision as said previously.

The medical oaths

Under Ancient Rome, several oaths must be pronounced by certain healthcare professionals. These texts are printed by a certain morality and are vector of several values as the respect for his teacher of medicine, the equality between all the patients, the respect for these, the non-transparency of its personal opinions while we exercise, the professional secrecy... The most known and most used by these oaths is the Hippocratic oath, actually created by Hippocrates, whom the doctors have to recite in front of a jury today having defended their thesis of the end of studies. it was updated and the Public health code is widely inspired by it. 

But other oaths are today compulsory: the oath of the Apothecaries of Galius which the pharmacists have to pronounce and a version of the Hippocratic oath adapted to the dental medicine or to the prison medicine are necessary for the exercise of the jobs by pharmacist, by dentist and by doctor of prisons.

Our medical oaths are so inherited from doctors of the Antiquity.

Medical education

Naturally, everything aspiring doctor has, as nowadays, need for a robust education to be able to exercise his job in a effective way. The Aesculapium deliver classes of medicine, but this learning is expensive. Most of the doctors thus learn their art with a Master. They are then to the rank of discens and can reach that of medicus having ended their apprenticeship and enough spread their clientele.

Conclusion

The works of the Greek and Roman doctors of the Antiquity influenced the medicine as a whole. Indeed, it is thanks to them that the medicine became a rigorous and scientific discipline, and either a mixture of superstitions. In the Middle Ages, no major step forward was made in the medical domain: the medicine stagnated. The doctors had to conform to the Roman Catholic Church in West: it was it which managed hospitals and universities of medicine, and many practices as the dissection were forbidden the professionals of the medicine. Really, the works of the big doctors were a recognized authority at the doctor's until the Renaissance, during which several theories were declared inaccurate, even if the old texts were always the bases on which they leaned. Finally, it is that from the XVIIIth century when the medicine was revolutionized and set a new face, among others thanks to the highlighting of the existence of germs, to the evolution of the surgical practices which makes them less dangerous and more adapted to the problems of the patient, to the creation of devices using the electricity, then the electronics who allow an automated, mechanized treatment. In spite of these decisive changes, the Roman doctors left indelible tracks in our current practices, for example through the etymology of certain terms, the medical oaths, the caduceus... And in the course of the evolution of the medicine, we shall always know how to remember their indisputable contribution in our scientific knowledge.