Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/150

Alexandria from settling in Rome. But there were still other forces at work which greatly delayed their taking such a step, viz., the unwillingness on the part of the authorities to grant to foreigners the rights of citizenship, and the very strong prejudice which the Roman aristocracy cherished with regard to the Greek nation. Some idea of the strength of the latter feeling may be gathered from the letter which Cato the Censor, perhaps the most influential citizen of Rome at that time, wrote to his son Marcus. Daremberg gives the following quotation from this epistle: "The Greeks are a perverse and unteachable race. Believe that an oracle is speaking to you when I say—Every time that the Greeks bring to us some branch of knowledge they will not fail to corrupt our manners; and it will be far worse for us if they should send us their physicians, for they have bound themselves by an oath to kill all Barbarians by the aid of medicine—and they have the insolence to reckon us also as Barbarians. Remember that I have forbidden you to call in a physician." Daremberg adds: "The old man Cato must have been very simple-minded to believe for a moment that physicians would be such egregious fools as willingly to kill the patients from whom they derive their support." But even this strong prejudice on the part of the Roman aristocracy had to give way in course of time to forces of a much stronger character. During the second century B. C., the Romans, no longer fearing the encroachments of their warlike neighbors and having overcome all danger of an invasion on the part of their once powerful Carthaginian foe, entered upon a career of conquest. The capture of an ever increasing number of cities and towns in Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt and Africa brought great wealth to Rome, and, with it, increasing luxury, an increase in the prevalence and variety of diseases, and an increased need of men who were competent to deal successfully with such diseases. The physicians who first attempted to meet this need were men of an inferior stamp, to whom the situation appeared simply to afford an excellent opportunity for making money; and very naturally they failed to gain the respect and confidence