Der Sanitatsdienst im Romischen Reich: Ein sozialgeschichte Studie zum romischen Militarsanitatswesen nebst einer Prosopographie des Sanitatspersonals (review)

The publication of this Munich Habilitationschrift will be welcomed by students of ancient medicine and of military medicine for its careful exposition of the ancient evidence for the medical personnel and organization of the Roman army. Concentrating mainly on the period 31 B.C. to A.D. 284, Wilmanns first discusses questions of military and medical organization, before passing to a prosopography of the medical personnel active in the Roman legions, auxiliaries, and fleets. There are also lists of medical men by regiment, and a map locating various hospitals. Wilmanns makes many cogent points: medici ordinarii were of centurion status; although many auxiliary forts had a small hospital, not all did, and in at least one instance a hospital building was replaced by something else; some physicians joined up for campaigns, and may well have returned to civilian life once the fighting died down. Particularly impressive is the range of her information and the way in which she integrates the very latest archaeological and epigraphical information. Her comments on the evidence for hospitals drastically revise earlier lists, and it is a pity that, despite several good indexes, these observations become almost lost among the footnotes. Above all, there is a solidity about the argumentation and conclusions of both parts of the book that will make this the first resort of anyone wishing to study the medicine of the Roman army.

Factual errors are very few. I would have liked a more detailed discussion of the apparently near-total disappearance from use of the legionary hospitals after 284, as well as of the common assumption of a triage system, by which only the serious wounded were sent back from campaign to a base fort hospital—the latter notion seems implausible for Britain, but a German or Danubian perspective might be different. The new Vindolanda tablets show how much sickness and how many accident-injuries there might be in an apparently peaceful period to fill some of the beds of a legionary hospital (cf. recently the sick list of A.D. 253–59 in R. Marichal, Les ostraca de Bu Njem [1992], and Pap. Yadin 723). The idea that Dioscorides might have served as a sort of inspector general of hospitals seems a somewhat far-fetched interpretation of his “life as a soldier.”

A few individuals seem to have slipped through the net. The physician and pharmacologist Scribonius Largus took part in the invasion of Britain in A.D. 43, although in what capacity is not entirely clear. A mysterious Archigenes, a “camp doctor,” is recorded in the Anecdota Parisina published by J. A. Cramer, vol. 4 (Oxford, 1841), p. 404. The decoration of military accoutrements on a tomb of a physician Asclepiades at Odessa ca. A.D. 175 (G. Mihailov, Inscr. graec. in Bulgaria repertae 150) suggests that their physician owner had seen military service. Somewhat more doubtful are Glaucias of Mesembria (ibid. 315), whose portrait was either inscribed on a shield or depicted him in military clothing, and Xenocrates of Heraclea in Pontus (Bulletin épigraphique 1938, n. 459), with veteran connections (but cf. Die Inschriften von Heraklea 7). R. P. Wright, in a letter to me, also suspected that the physician at Maryport (Roman inscriptions of Britain 808) was military, but proof is lacking.

But these minor criticisms should not be allowed to mar one’s gratitude for what is an excellent survey of material that is both difficult to find and refractory to interpret. Future historians of ancient military medicine will have to begin here.