Was the Roman Army Provided with any Medical Officers?

LITTLE knowledge has been transmitted to us regarding the commissariat of the Roman army. In. none of our common works on Roman antiquities, as in those of Rossini, Kennet, Adams, Smith, Ramsay, etc., is there any allusion made' to the qliestion, whether or not the ROliJan troops were provided with medical officers. Nor does there exist, as far' as I am aware,in the Roman classics, any distinct reference to the subject. I have also in v.ain searched among Roman medical authors, and among the writings of the Greek' physicians who practised at Rome, for any direct notices, relative to the IIledical or' surgical care of the numerous and scattered armies which Rome employed in the different qual·ters of the :world .. In fact, the only passages, with which I am acquainted, relating at all to. the subject, consist of a casual remark in one of the military epis'tles of Aureliall; two incidental legal observations contained in the law writings of Modesti~us, and in the Codex of J usti~ian; and a· reference by Galen to the opportunities for anatomical obsetvation presen'ted to . the physicians during the German wars. . . , The reference to the medical superintendence of the army by Aurelian, occurs in Vopiscus' I.Jife 6fthat emperor, chap. vi. In issuing some peremptory orders regarding the discipline of the army, after enumerating various rigid rules which the soldiers were to observe, Aurelian concludes with the following admonition \1nd announcement:' " Let each soldier aid and serve his fellow; 'let them be cured gratuitously by the physicians (a medicisgratis curentur); let them give nothing to soothsayers; let them conduct themselves quietly in theirhospitia; and he who would raise strife, , let him be lashed."l . ' When -treating. of those who, by absence from Rome, etc., were exempted from' some burthens and. taxes,. the jurist,. Modestinus, who I wrote in the earlier half of the third century, mentions, among others, the military physicians (Medici Militum) , "because," he adds" the office which they fill is beneficial to the public, and o~ght not to be productive of any