Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 June 1884 — Soldiers’ Doctors in Olden Times. [ARTICLE]

Soldiers’ Doctors in Olden Times.

The Saxon physician, Dr. Frolich, who holds the rank of Oberstabsarzt in the German army, has published in a medical journal an interesting essay upon “War Surgery Among the Ancient Bomans.” The care and nurture of soldiers wounded in conflict for their fatherland may have been wretchedly negligent in the Middle Ages, and even so late as tjie Seven Years’ war the surgery and nursing of the sick soldiers were as bad as they could be, while the official army doctor bore an ill-repute morally and professionally. Among the ancient Bomans, however, the soldiery were better cared for. From the time of the Punic wars the Boman Republic provided that well-instructed physicians should always accompany its troops on a campaign, and Dr. Frolich shows that the members of the organized medical staff took a respectable place in the military ranks. The great reformer of the army in this respect, however, was the Emperor Augustus. “He was the first to institute formal field hospitals,” as Dr. Frolich says, “quite in the modern fashion.” He gives details in illustration of the condition of military surgery and a list of the officials who served the camp under the direction of the surgeons. There were prescribed rules issued to their subordinates for “the binding of lance wounds” and “for the drawing out of arrows.” A Boman legion had its regular “sick-bearers” and a “book-keeper,” who attended to the provision of materials for the hospital. There are directions for the detection of malingerers, which prove that the brave Boman legions had an average number of cowards in their ranks. In the year 496 B. C. several soldiers under Appius Claudius, wishing to shirk the combat with the terrible Volscians, used the bandages delivered to the medical staff for the binding up of their sound limbs, and sought by this means, to pass themselves off as wounded men and escape the fight.

An exchange says that, in order to obtain a Texas father’s permission to pay your address to his daughter, you should invite him to see you throw a bottle into the air and shoot a hole through the bottom without breaking the vessel. We should think a quicker and more effective plan would be to present the father with the contents of the bottle.