Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/53

37 Care of Sick in Ancient World 37 No doubt Rome had other medical teachers. Among her thousands of Greek and Asiatic slaves were men of high education and attainment, and many of them understood medical treatment and procedure. Of nursing there is no record, save by military orderHes in the army, and an occasional old woman. It is probable that in the homes of the wealthy all nursing was done by slaves. Though the Romans were never distinguished for compassion or pity, they did make a remark- able cult of health preservation. Their engineering and sanitary works, their aqueducts, their pre- cautions against malaria, and their personal hygiene need only be alluded to. They gave medicine a dignified place in civic life. A public health service with free dispensaries was developed in Rome and professors of medicine and sanitation received civic honours. The best and perhaps the only genuine hospitals of ancient Rome were for the army. Sick and wounded soldiers in early times had been billeted on private families for their care, but the military hospitals developed later, as shown by excavations in Pompeii, were well built and equipped. The nursing of the orderlies or Nosocomi was probably of the same type that every army nurse has seen where orderlies have charge. The great talents and ability of the